Last quarter (July-September), Sony’s consoles didn’t sell as many units as they did last year… but with the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro this week, this holiday season could be the time for an improvement!
Sony has also released its quarterly financial report, revealing that a total of 65.6 million PlayStation 5 units were shipped to stores in the year ending September 30. In the previous quarter, 3.8 million units were shipped, which is down from 4.9 million in 2023. There is a decline in hardware, but interestingly the opposite is true for software.
PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 games sold 77.7 million units last quarter (up 10.1 million from 2023), of which 5.3 million were first-party (internally developed) titles, again an improvement from last year’s 4.7 million. The share of digital (PlayStation Network) game sales also increased from 67% last year to 70% this year. PlayStation Network has 116 million monthly active users, up 9 million from last year. As usual, PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers were not disclosed…
Finally, Sony also announced the sales of its latest first-party title. Astro Bot was released on PlayStation 5 on September 6th and by November 3rd had already sold 1.5 million units, with 37% of customers not having bought another first-party title in the last two years. So Team Asobi’s 3D platformer isn’t selling like hotcakes (the same can be said for Silent Hill 2 Remake, which was released for PlayStation 5 AND PC), but given the genre, it’s no wonder it can’t reach the tens of millions right away. The last time we saw something like this was Black Mythos: Wukong, which was released on August 20th for PlayStation 5 and PC.
Sony can certainly hope for stronger sales in the October-December quarter. This is not only because of the Christmas season (when sales always pick up), but also because of the PlayStation 5 Pro, which has been available since November 7th. Hardcore fans are sure to buy it.
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