Nearly 5 years in, PS5 sales remain neck-and-neck with PS4
PS5 is just 1.2 million units behind PS4, launch aligned, but Sony expects to sell fewer consoles this year
Nearly five years into its life, PlayStation 5 sales remain neck-and-neck with its predecessor, PlayStation 4.
In its latest results covering the three months ending March 31, 2025, Sony said it sold some 2.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles, for a total of 18.5 million for the fiscal year (down from 20.8 million).
That means PS5 has now sold 77.8 million units total since its launch in November 2020 – just over one million units behind where PlayStation 4 was at the same period of its lifecycle.
That figure comes with the caveat that PS5 suffered significant stock issues during the pandemic, and PS4 was also significantly cheaper than PS5 currently is, launch aligned.
Five years after launch, a standard PS4 could be purchased for as little as $200/£200 ($256/£256, adjusted for inflation), while PS5 has actually increased in price since launch, at £430 / $450.
Going forward, Sony faces a challenging economic climate with PlayStation 5. Most consoles are manufactured in China, where US tariffs of 30% currently apply, but are paused down from 145% for 90 days.
PlayStation 4 went on to sell 117 million units, which is Sony’s second-best-selling console behind PlayStation 2 (160 million).
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has warned that Donald Trump’s tariffs could lead to console prices rising by nearly 70% in the US.
Looking ahead to the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, Sony said it expects to sell fewer PlayStation 5 consoles at around 15 million units, which would see PS4 pull ahead slightly, since it managed 17.8 million units during the same period. However, it expects an increase in first-party game sales, with Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2, and Marathon due out this year.
PS5’s sales forecast for the current business year will certainly be affected by Grand Theft Auto 6’s recent delay to May 2026. DFC Intelligence CEO David Cole commented: “The delay in GTA VI is a real blow to the PS5. This was supposed to be the product that got many consumers to get off the PS4 and on to a PS5.”
Sony reported that sales for its Game and Network Services division were up 9% year-on-year, to about $31.5 billion, and operating income increased 43% to around $2.8 billion, which it said was partly due to third-party game sales and in-game spending.
Sony said its monthly active gaming users for the year ended April 1, 2025, were up 5% at 124 million users, which is the highest in PlayStation’s history. Last year, the company said that about half of its monthly active users were on PS4.
For the fiscal year, Sony’s Network services revenue – which encompasses PS Plus and advertising revenue – increased 22.7. Software sales (PS4 and PS5) increased 5.9% year-over-year, to 303 million units, 28.9 million of which were first-party titles. Digital software accounted for 76% of game sales, compared to 70% last year.
Commenting on the results, Tokyo-based industry consultant Dr Serkan Toto told VGC: “It’s not easy to do business for a console manufacturer these days: there are tariffs, inflation, higher production costs, slower pace of first-party releases, or general political uncertainty about the future to consider.
“In Sony‘s case, that one critical system seller GTA 6 slipped out of the fiscal year, too – perhaps the biggest blow of them all. Against this backdrop, Sony‘s numbers for the past year and their outlook are solid -also thanks to the fact that Microsoft apparently pivots away from hardware to some extent.”
