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As PS5 Sales Soar, Sony Crosses 500 Million Home Consoles Sold

Lunatic_Gamer

Gold Member
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With the latest PS5 sales update, Sony has now sold over 500 million home consoles - and as with many big number stats, there's a whole lot of historical data to unpack here.

As part of its latest financial report, Sony revealed that a record 6.3 million PS5 units were shipped last quarter. That brings total PS5 shipments up to a total of 38.5 million. Now, Sony has only sporadically provided console sales data - this is the kind of thing the notes in the Wikipedia margins are all about - but if you total up the last bit of reliable sales data for all five of the company's home consoles, the total is now over 500 million.

If the idea of 500 million PlayStation consoles being sold sounds familiar, well, Sony launched a limited-edition PS4 celebrating the milestone all the way back in 2018. Why the discrepancy? Sony's own measurement of the milestone likely would've included sales of portable consoles, and the PSP and Vita would add just shy of 100 million combined sales to the total.

Some fans have been quick to note that this technically makes Sony the first console manufacturer to reach 500 million home consoles sold. That's technically true, but there are some substantial caveats to the stat. Sony only has two meaningful competitors for this milestone. One of them, Microsoft, launched the first Xbox after a full generation of wildly successful PS1 sales, so it doesn't have quite as much runway as Sony.

The other competitor, Nintendo, then has its own advantage, having launched its first hardware a decade before Sony released the PS1. If you limit Nintendo to strictly its home console hardware and Switch, however, it's sold just over 400 million units - definitely behind Sony. But if you include handhelds, Nintendo has sold well over 800 million units to date, and would've crossed the 500 million mark sometime way back in the DS and Wii generation.

Direct comparisons are sketchy for all these reasons, but one thing's for certain: with the PS5 proving successful, Sony is cementing its position as one of the top platform holders in the history of the games industry.


Season 1 King GIF by The Spanish Princess
 

kyussman

Member
I think they made gaming cool.....and who doesn't want to be cool.The OG PS1 and a copy of Wipeout was pretty fucking great back in the day......the fact they have kept up the momentum for so fucking long,well I guess it's just great business at the end of the day.
 
Do we have estimate totals for Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft?

Edit - I see it says 400 for Nintendo.
Just estimating off top of my head, maybe, 170 for Xbox?
 
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ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
I think they made gaming cool.....and who doesn't want to be cool.The OG PS1 and a copy of Wipeout was pretty fucking great back in the day......the fact they have kept up the momentum for so fucking long, well I guess it's just great business at the end of the day.
their identity so far is stronger than ever
 

nial

Gold Member
If you limit Nintendo to strictly its home console hardware and Switch, however, it's sold just over 400 million units - definitely behind Sony.
Why do all these people ALWAYS forget that they have to exclude the Lite model when counting Switch sales, since it's purely a handheld? It's actually less than 400M (383M)
 

Robb

Gold Member
Why do all these people ALWAYS forget that they have to exclude the Lite model when counting Switch sales, since it's purely a handheld? It's actually less than 400M (383M)
It’s just another version of the Switch SKU so it’ll always be counted alongside the rest. You better get used to it cause it’ll likely be the same for the next gen Nintendo system as well.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
Why do all these people ALWAYS forget that they have to exclude the Lite model when counting Switch sales, since it's purely a handheld? It's actually less than 400M (383M)
I think the real issue is that the switch isn't just counted as a handheld period.

To me, it's a handheld that just happens to have a SKU that can be easily connected to your TV.
 
I think the real stupid comparison is Switch to PS2, because the actual comparison that Nintendo should care about is DS + Wii sales combined, because that is what the Switch is replacing - both their handheld and console.
That is stupid otherwise we can say the PS4 era flopped because PS2 by itself and PS3+PSP sold more than PS4+PSV. If you really have to compare Switch to a previous handheld+home console combo then it should be 3DS+Wii U because those are the systems it replaced and the market conditions that enabled Wii+DS to sell so much no longer exist.
 
That is stupid otherwise we can say the PS4 era flopped because PS2 by itself and PS3+PSP sold more than PS4+PSV. If you really have to compare Switch to a previous handheld+home console combo then it should be 3DS+Wii U because those are the systems it replaced and the market conditions that enabled Wii+DS to sell so much no longer exist.
Well yeah I mean directly it should be compared to Wii U/3DS, but the entire point of comparing to PS2 is to compare to the highest and for Nintendo that is really the Wii/DS.

Agreed though that any of these comparisons isn't particularly helpful because the market just isn't the same.
 
Can they reissue that limited edition 500 mil PS4 colourway for the PS5 Slim or Pro? Loved that colour.
 
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The home console breakdown is

PS1 - 102.5 million
PS2 - 158.7 million
PS3 - 87.4 million
PS4 - 117.2 million
PS5 - 38.4 million
Total - 504.2 million

Handheld breakdown

PSP - 82 million
PSV - 17 million
Total - 99 million

Total home+handheld - 603.2 million
 
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