PS5 Ships 54.8 Million Units as of December 2023 - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 February 2024 / 6,554 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment in its financial results announced it has shipped 54.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles as of December 31, 2023.
With 54.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles shipped through the end of December that means 8.2 million units were shipped from October to December. This is up 1.1 million from the same quarter in 2022.
For reference, the PlayStation 4 had shipped 9.7 million units in the same quarter for a lifetime total of 57.3 million units shipped as of December 31, 2016. This puts the PS5 behind shipped PS4 units by 2.5 million units.
There were a total of 89.7 million games sold on the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 for the quarter. This is up 3.2 million from 86.5 million during the same period a year earlier. Digital sales accounted for 66 percent of software sales.
There were 16.2 million first-party games sold across the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. This is down 4.6 million from 20.8 million a year ago.
There were 123 million monthly active users on the PlayStation Network, an increase of 11 million from 112 million a year ago. Sony did not disclose the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers. It was at 47.4 million at the end of March 2023.
Sony's Game & Network Services Segment for the quarter ending December 31, 2023, reported revenue increased 197.9 billion yen ($1.31 billion) year-over-year to 1,444.4 billion yen ($9.59 billion), while operating income decreased 30.1 billion yen ($0.20 billion) to 86.1 billion yen ($0.57 billion).
Sony in its earnings call stated PlayStation 5 sales did not meet expectations over the holidays and have lowered their forecast for the PS5 for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 by four million from 25 million units to 21 million units. With 16.4 million shipped through the first three quarters that would mean Sony expects to ship 4.6 million units in the January to March quarter.
Sony is expecting PlayStation 5 hardware sales to decline year-over-year and has no major first-party releases from existing IP for the next fiscal year, which runs from April 2024 to March 2025.
"Sales are expected to be lower than the November forecast, mainly due to an expected decrease in sales of hardware resulting from lower unit sales, partially offset by the impact of foreign exchange rates and an expected increase in sales of non-first-party titles including add-on content," reads the report from Sony.
"Operating income and Adjusted OIBDA are expected to remain unchanged from the November forecast mainly due to the impact of the above-mentioned increase in sales of non-first-party titles, substantially offset by an expected increase in losses from hardware mainly due to promotions."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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If PS5 has peaked in 2023 and it's currently behind PS4, I would think that PS5 should end up somewhere between 100 - 120 million units, probably behind PS4. Let's see if PS5 Pro can breathe some new life into its life span.
About 80-90M you mean lifetime sales
Based on data from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. ( https://twistedvoxel.com/ps5-xbox-series-xs-sales-2023/), Series X/S sales seem to be considerably overestimated.
They reached a number of 77 million units, and considering PS5 at +53-54M sold, it means that series X/S is probably at ~24M. (?)
Perfectly reasonable comment here that got downvoted for no reason
It might be that the xbox 22m number from last summer was a shipped number and not sell-through number if this Take-Two number is accurate
we don't know how old the data is that Take Two has. Impossible to say.
It’s to December 31st, I’m fairly sure that’s stated
The 77 million figure from Take-Two are estimates from IDG consulting.
I know the regulars are aware Sony's figures are shipped and shipped does not equal sell-through. But we did get official sell-through data from Sony through March 2023 and the gap between shipped and sell-through was 2.4M as of March 2023. So if the gap remains the same that would put sell-through around 52.4M. And again the 77M figure are estimates from IDG.
Sell-through figures (page 7): https://sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/business_segment_meeting/pdf/2023/GNS.pdf
Shipped figures: https://sonyinteractive.com/en/our-company/business-data-sales/
This comment section is hilarious! “There’s some Sony bad news? Let’s go make this about Xbox!” xD
There’s a lot more said thats not covered in this article. Namely Sony 1st party multiplatform consideration and PS Studios said to be spending way too much money. Seems like spending hundreds of millions on every major title was not the way.
https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1757743775336825075?s=46
https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1757711637891760146?s=46
There is no bad news though! That's exactly the issue. Everyone is acting as if there is. Missing a target is not necessarily bad news. It depends on other factors too
There's more at play here as mentioned in the 2 links. Sony's President primarily talked about how PS Studios are spending way too much money on their games causing minimal profit margins despite the platforms record revenue, and it's now leading him in wanting PS first-party titles to go more multiplatform. I'm pretty sure he's currently referring to PC only though. Helldivers 2 PC success isn't missed on him as far as day in date releases go.
It's more than simply missing a target. Prices for consoles have only gone up when they historically always go down as time goes on. PlayStation console sales peaked with the PS2 and never have come close to reaching that milestone since yet the overall cost of the system and making the games have dramatically increased. And with the huge increase in general with cost of living, gaming is starting to go from a luxury, to a mega luxury for many. And Sony's President made it clear that dramatic price cuts just isn't a viable option.
Many are mocking Xbox's soon to be plans, but it may be what it takes for game companies, especially platform holders, to survive. Really the only one that's currently safe is Nintendo, but even then, Nintendo can't afford another Wii U situation. They don't have a 3DS to keep them afloat this time around. They won't even price cut the Switch 7 years into its lifespan when it was already out of date when it first launched.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a big reason why MS and Sony are looking into developing handhelds. Areas to cut cost. But they also need to get their game budgets in check. Japanese studios are able to sell 1 million copies of a game and deem it a success. Western studios would deem sales figures like that as a failure. Business models have to change, and that's what both MS and Sony are currently working on fixing asap. One big way of doing that, is expanding outside of the console exclusive realm.
The whole point of the first party games with huge spends and minimal profit margins is to convince consumers to buy your product over your competition. Sony have succeeded in doing that. I don't see any negative in Sony's situation right now. There's always things that can be done better but their situation is far better than Xbox's, where everyone is having a meltdown on twitter and people spamming all the executives pleading with them not to port their games to Playstation
You may want to tell that to Sony's President then. He seems to be out of the loop on this information.
The last people MS executives will listen to are twitter folks who are pleading and don't know anything about how to operate a business. Let alone a multi-billion dollar one. Xbox executives will do what they feel they need to do to keep the Xbox brand afloat, as will PlayStation executives.
Sony is already showing how they're planning on adjusting their business in their gaming division, and tomorrow Microsoft will show theirs.
I'd like to think that the reason consoles and games are getting more expensive, instead of cheaper, are for a couple of reasons.
- Prices of materials, producing companies want more for their services, because they are some of the only one that make it (like a semi-monopoly).
- Inflation has outpaced manufacturing & material costs
- Workers want better pay in China, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.
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COVID-19, all companies that weren't ready for a 2 year non-work hiatus are playing catch up
Also I think Nintendo can survive 2 more WiiU incidents. It can last 50 years before they need to even think about selling their IP.
I enjoyed reading your comment. Great work!
"This is up 1.1 million from the same quarter in 2022."
Shouldn't this be for 2023 ?
123 million active users, I believe this is a new record. Almost 90 million games sold is impressive. Which console sold the most games in the world?
PS4 with almost 1.6 billion units sold as of April 2021.
So it should be closer to 2billion units.
PS4 incredibly sold more games than Xbox in Europe last year so the platform is still going strong
only disc based, not in total though. PS4 is still majority physical while Xbox is definitely not.
billion i thought it was onely in the millions
Xbox with Activision Blizzard 7,1 billion $
Playstation 9,5 billion $.
Nice ^^
For gaming I describe the news on vgchartz as bob dylan would say about both sony and mr. mircosoft "THE TIMES ARE CHANGING"
With sonys shipment figures out. Will the PS5 need to be adjusted up or down.
Sony is expecting PlayStation 5 hardware sales to decline year-over-year and has no major first-party releases for the next fiscal year, which runs from April 2024 to March 2025.
Seems like that second IP that's in development by Santa Monica isn't releasing anytime soon. Nor will ND launch more than one PS5 game.
Santa Monica typically releases one or two games a gen. This time it was GOW Ragnarok, Bluepoint helped with that
ND was focussing on Factions which got cancelled. So other projects are far from releasing anytime soon.
Sucker Punch, Bluepoint and Bend are small and typically need 5 to 6 years to make a game. Since Sony wants to make massive games.
It could also be that many of these studios are working on a live service game. Which take a long time to develop and a short time to flop, just look at Rocksteady.
Sony said no big sequels in established IPs coming this fiscal year, not no Major First-Party games.
Also, a decline in hardware could be 20m units.
Sony did not utter a word of what their first party studios where working on during the last state of play. Sony typically announces major first party games a year in advance, for smaller games they sometimes take less time. But their big/major games usually are announced well in advance of a year of releasing.
Bend is rumoured to be working on revitalizing a ND IP (most likely Uncharted), so that one is not releasing anytime soon. Sucker Punch is presumably working on a Ghost of Tsushima part 2. Perhaps Firesprite, Asobi and/or Housemarque will release something. Aside from Firesprite I don't think any of these studios are making a major first party game. Not to say those have no worth, but are not on SM2 or GOW Ragnarok is level.
“ Not to say those have no worth, but are not on SM2 or GOW Ragnarok is level”
Is that the definition of a major first party release? If so Xbox also has zero major first-party releases this year and probably the next one is TESVi in 2028
I would say the Indiana Jones game and Avowed are pretty major, COD is also massive and legit a first party game. Not everything Sony releases is major. For me the major releases from Playstation are games like Spiderman, God of War, Gran Turismo, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima. Not games like Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, Dreams or Astrobot which will struggle to even sell 5 million units, I still bought those btw, (except for Astrobot) but they aren't going to sell a lot of consoles.
Calling Avowed A major release is crazy. Avowed gameplay is massively downvoted on YouTube for looking so mediocre.
Indiana Jones trailer on Xbox YouTube has around 540k views so far.
Those games you mentioned, SM2 & Ragnarok have gameplay reveal videos on the PS channel with 20m views.
I'm very skeptical there is wide public interest in Indiana Jones.
The Indiana Jones trailer has more than 7 million views on YouTube on the Bethesda channel.
False misinformation. Learn to read.
Sony will release first party titles in 2024 just not from "existing franchises". So it's all new IP.
Concord, the AAA PVP multiplayer shooter from first party literally is out this year.
Maybe they should have been more aggressive with price drops and had games release over the holidays and the PS5 might have hit their forecast.
They don't need to. On Thursday Xbox is going to announce it's multiplatform plans and probably confirm their games are coming to PlayStation. Xbox has thrown in the towel so they don't have competition anymore
This aged like milk.
No it didn't. Can't wait to play Hifi rush on my PS
