Sony says PS5 has hit 40 million sales, tracking slightly behind PS4

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has claimed that PlayStation 5 sales have reached 40 million units worldwide.

PS4 remains the fastest-selling Sony console to reach 40 million sales, having reportedly reached the milestone two months sooner, although it didn’t face the same Covid-related supply issues that have checked PS5 momentum.

“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,” said SIE CEO Jim Ryan.

“Despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID, our teams and our partners worked diligently to deliver PS5 on time. We continued to face headwinds with the pandemic, and it took months for supply chains to normalize so we could have the inventory to keep up with demand.

“For more months than I care to remember, we kept thanking our community for their patience while working through these issues. But now PS5 supply is well-stocked and we are seeing that pent up demand finally being met.”

Sony recently announced plans to sell a record number of PlayStation consoles during its current fiscal year.

The company intends to ship 25 million PS5 consoles during FY2023 (the 12-month period ending on March 31, 2024). If achieved, it would beat a 25-year-old console sales record set when the original PlayStation shipped 22.6 million units in FY98.

Sony revealed the annual PS5 target as part of its FY2022 earnings results in April.

During the fourth quarter of its last fiscal year, which ended in March, the company shipped 6.3 million PS5 consoles to reach 38.3 million lifetime shipments.

The figure represented a record for any games console during the first three months of a calendar year, and was also double PS4’s all-time peak for the same window.

Recent PS5 sales momentum has been boosted by significant price promotions, and it’s also been claimed that a temporary $50 / £75 / €75 price cut will be announced soon for the United States and Europe.

Sony may be attempting to clear stock ahead of unconfirmed plans to launch a new PS5 model featuring a detachable disc drive later this year.

Further reading

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Microsoft expects Sony to launch a $400 PS5 Slim console this year

The Xbox maker also thinks a PS5 Pro console will be released "in the near future"

Microsoft doesn’t usually disclose sales figures for its Xbox Series X/S consoles, which also launched in November 2020.

However, reports have claimed that at last month’s Big Festival 2023 in Brazil, Xbox‘s Leonardo Barros Barreto shared a slide seemingly revealing that Xbox Series X/S had sold a combined total of 21 million units.

Microsoft didn’t confirm or deny the accuracy of these reports when approached by VGC at the time for clarification.