We’re hearing that Sony’s half-generation console refresh is off to a good start, but it’s struggling to keep up with the performance of its predecessor, the PlayStation 4 Pro.

Mat Piscatella, an analyst at Circana (formerly NPD Group), shared that the PlayStation 5 Pro’s sales in the United States have lagged behind the PlayStation 4 Pro’s results in the first few months after its release. The biggest difference between the two consoles was price: while the PlayStation 5 Pro was available starting at $700, the PlayStation 4 Pro was available for $400 (and came standard with a Blu-ray drive, so disc game collectors didn’t have to buy a separate optical drive at a premium).

The research firm’s comparison is slightly skewed because the PlayStation 5 Pro was a week behind. In November, however, Sony’s console had a solid start, according to Piscatella, and was at a similar level to the PlayStation 4 Pro. The PlayStation 5 Pro was released on November 7, and more than 50 games have received PS5 Pro support, which improves graphics and/or performance on the console.

Sony hasn’t officially released PlayStation 5 Pro sales figures yet (and probably won’t, just like Nintendo won’t reveal how many Switch Lite or OLED sales they’ve had, for example), but the recently released PlayStation 5 results already include this console. If we look at the time-to-release, the PlayStation 5 has a smaller lag compared to the PlayStation 4 (76.5 million vs. 75 million). So the console is losing a bit of momentum, and the lack of first-party games is a factor, as Sony hasn’t really been showing much of that lately (but Astro Bot was great last fall), which is probably why they announced Days Gone Remastered, for example…

PlayStation 5 can look forward to Death Stranding 2: On The Beach and Ghost of Yotei as first party games this year.

Source: VGC, Bsky