PS5 Tops 40 Million Consoles Sold

Sony has today announced that the PlayStation 5 has now surpassed 40 million units sold in total. When the PS5 launched back at the end of 2020, stock was scarce, primarily as a result of difficulties that arose in the wake of the pandemic. In recent months, though, PS5 availability has finally stabilized, which has led to potential customers finally being able to buy the console for themselves. Now, these increased sales throughout 2023 have led to Sony passing another major milestone for the platform. 

Shared on Sony's official website today, the longtime gaming manufacturer announced that sales of the PS5 have now topped 40 million as of July 16, 2023. Sony also specified that these 40 million consoles have been sold through directly to consumers rather than having been sold to retailers. In short, this is a pretty incredible achievement by Sony given that the PS5 hasn't even been out for a full three years just yet. 

"We launched PlayStation 5 in November 2020 and the world was in a strange and different place than when we announced the console in 2019. Despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID, our teams and our partners worked diligently to deliver PS5 on time," PlayStation boss Jim Ryan wrote in the announcement post. "With the support of PlayStation fans, we have reached a milestone of 40 million PS5 consoles sold through* to gamers since launch. Thank you so much to our community of gamers – without you this would have been an impossible task."

Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how long the PS5 can continue to sell at such a high rate. Currently, the console is outpacing the sales of the PS4 over the same period of time. Assuming that this momentum can hold strong, it seems likely that the PS5 can top the lifetime sales mark of 117 million that the PS4 had. Whether or not it can reach the 155 million mark set by the PS2 remains to be seen, but for now, Sony has to be thrilled with how its latest hardware is performing. 

Are you surprised to see how quickly the PS5 has hit 40 million units sold? And do you think it has a chance to outsell the lifetime sales of the PS4? Let me know for yourself either down in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter at @MooreMan12.