Sony would be happy with that if it had been a single-digit increase, but the PlayStation 5 showed a much more hefty result (while PlayStation Plus subscriber figures for the last quarter were not disclosed, which is suspicious…).

The odd thing is that the PlayStation 5 isn’t doing so well software-wise. It’s now clear to see why they didn’t release a subscriber figure for the April-June period (only how many in total, of course, not the proportion of Premium, Extra, and Essential subscribers), as they threw in the end of the PlayStation Plus Essential triple game post for September that, yeah, sorry guys, we’re charging +30% more for all three tiers.

But hardware-wise… Gamesindustry editor Christopher Dring apologized on Twitter for being behind on European market figures, but in the markets they track, the PlayStation 5’s sales in the last month of summer 2023 were up 200% on August last year. With Baldur’s Gate 3 sales unavailable, FIFA 23 was the frontrunner, and the Nintendo Switch promotion played a part in that (we should add here that the Switch port has been a re-release without any modifications for years – that’s what the Legacy Edition moniker covers…). If we look at just one format (i.e., platform-exclusive titles Dring refers to here), Zelda, i.e., The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was the frontrunner in August.

In the UK, the PlayStation 5 jumped 60% year-on-year, and Sony’s console was also up 42% in July. Sony recently announced that it had set a record for the first fiscal quarter (April to June) with the PlayStation 5, with sales of over 6.3 million units. At a minimum, the platform launched in November 2020 is now at 41.7 million sales, already beating the PlayStation 4 in time-aligned sales.

Source: WCCFTech