Earlier today, Sony released their fiscal year 2019 second quarter earnings report. During the three month period, which ended on September 30, the company sold 2.8 million PlayStation 4’s. This now brings the PlayStation 4 to a staggering 102.8 million units sold. Thus, the PS4 has now passed both the Nintendo Wii and the original PlayStation to become the second best selling home console of all time.
Even though the PS4 has now become the second best selling home console, fourth best selling overall console if you include handhelds, it is still far behind the sales of the PlayStation 2 which sold an astounding 155 million units. Because of the PS4’s new sales milestone, Sony now owns the top three best selling home consoles of all time.
However, while PlayStation 4’s overall sales are hitting new highs, sales of the console are declining when compared to last year. Last year, Sony sold 3.9 million consoles in the second quarter of last year which is 1.1 million more than what was accounted for this past quarter. This drop has made the company reassess their outlook for sales of the console and made them reduce projections from 25 million units sold to 13.5 million for the full fiscal year.
Software sales for the quarter didn’t meet Sony’s expectations either. When compared to Q2 of last year, sales of both physical and digital software fell to $2.34 billion from last Q2’s $2.91 billion. However, Sony racks this decline to not having a major release this quarter like last year stating, “Game software sales decreased primarily due to the absence of the major first-party hit title Marvel’s Spider-Man, which was released in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year, and a significant year-on-year decrease in the contribution from free to play games”
Though sales are starting to dwindle for the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 5 is just over the horizon with holiday 2020 release window.