Meanwhile, the company is actively encouraging PlayStation 4 owners to switch to the new console, and many gamers didn’t have a PS4 but do have a PlayStation 5.

Sony’s chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said in the company’s quarterly financial report that Sony initially feared that the Xbox Series would be able to catch up with the PlayStation 6 in terms of sales, but that the tables had turned in the previous quarter: “In the United States also, in summer there was some narrowing of the gap [between the PlayStation 5 and its peers], but more recently our share has expanded significantly. However, this is something dynamic, so we have to observe the situation from the fourth quarter onwards,” said Hiroki, who will also become Sony’s president in April, while his predecessor Kenichiro Yoshida will become CEO.

Sony has recently started marketing Live from PS5, with TV commercials and trailers to encourage gamers who are still on PlayStation 4 to switch to the PlayStation 5 (and pay the price, which was increased almost everywhere, but in America, they didn’t dare to raise the price – no wonder their market share grew…). At the end of the year, many people switched consoles, so the engagement rate of PlayStation 4 players dropped while that of PlayStation 5 increased. It considers the proportion of PlayStation Plus subscribers, time spent playing and spending, and is why Sony has decided to “continue to accelerate the transition of PlayStation 4 users to PlayStation 5.”

Nearly 30% of monthly active users on PlayStation 5 have never used a PlayStation 4. Perhaps it is why Sony has decided to adjust its sales expectations for the end of March, as it is now aiming to sell 19 million PlayStation 5s between April last year and the end of March this year. That’s down from the original forecast of 22.6 million, but the target was 18 million.

Source: PSL, PSL, PSL