Sony has officially sold 40 million PS5 consoles worldwide since launch, despite years of supply chain issues impacting sales. While the console had one of the rockiest launch periods ever, thanks to coronavirus-induced production bottlenecks and a global shortage of semiconductor chips, it appears the PS5 has now weathered the storm.
Years after launch, supply is now stable, and the console is freely available for players. It appears the bulk of its sales have been generated in the late 2021 – 2023 period, given Sony initially announced the ’10 million units sold’ milestone in July 2021.
As noted by The Verge, supply chain remedies in 2023 saw Sony tripling the number of consoles it was shipping between months, with 6.3 million units sold between January and March 2023 alone. No doubt, this was also inspired by an interest in new and upcoming games – including God of War Ragnarok, Final Fantasy XVI, and more.
According to Sony, interest has also been driven by a number of fan-favourite PS5 games, which include: Astro’s Playroom, Bugsnax, Cult of the Lamb, Dead Space, Disco Elysium, Elden Ring, Fall Guys, FIFA 23, Gran Turismo 7, Hades, Hitman 3, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut, Elden Ring, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and more.
Read: Best PS5 games of 2023 (so far)
In a blog post, Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment has thanked PS5 fans for their support, and reflected on a difficult few years for console production.
‘We launched PlayStation 5 in November 2020 and the world was in a strange and different place than when we announced the console in 2019,’ Ryan said. ‘Despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID, our teams and our partners worked diligently to deliver PS5 on time.’
‘We continued to face headwinds with the pandemic, and it took months for supply chains to normalise so we could have the inventory to keep up with demand. For more months than I care to remember, we kept thanking our community for their patience while working through these issues. But now PS5 supply is well-stocked and we are seeing that pent up demand finally being met.’
Given the year ahead is set to feature an array of popular PS5 exclusives – namely, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – we expect Sony’s figures will get a larger bump in the coming months.
