SONY Announces PLAYSTATION 5 Has MORE than 10 MILLION UNITS SOLD Since NOVEMBER 2020 Launch

 

In the videogame scene, Sony truly has come well into its own, from originally supplying the sound chip for Nintendo’s Super Nintendo console in the early 1990s, to launching the disc-based PlayStation console a few years later. And the PlayStation console line simply continues to get bigger, more powerful, pricier, and despite that last one, a better seller than the model that came before. The PlayStation 5 which released in November of last year was an expensive behemoth, but believe it or not as of this July that console has already sold more than 10 million units around the world.

The Verge tells us that Sony’s PlayStation 5 may have now become the new fastest-selling Sony videogame console. This was revealed by the Japanese game company this past Wednesday, July 28, or 249 days after the official launch of the console on November 12, 2020. The last update by Sony on PS5 units sold was this past April, where the figure stood at 7.8 million. This underlines the sheer speed that the console is flying off shelves compared to its predecessor the PlayStation 4. A past Sony update in 2014 notes that the PS4 surpassed 10 million units sold only 271 days after its launch.

Sales figures like these are interesting considering that PS5-related news might mention that Sony’s latest console was incredibly hard to find and purchase. Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan acknowledges that the global chip shortage has been a contributing factor to how slow the company has been shipping PS5 units worldwide. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us as demand for PS5 continues to outstrip supply,” says Ryan, but adds that SIE is determined to improve inventory levels, citing it as merely a challenge of the gaming industry to overcome.

For further comparisons, the Sony PlayStation 2, considered the best-selling all-time console, took more than a year to have 10 million units sold. The PlayStation 3 was even worse, releasing in 2006 while Sony expected the milestone to be reached only in 2009.

The speed by which a new console could break 10 million in unit sales has been considered an unofficial benchmark to gauge whether the game system was successful with gamers. Interestingly, it was first proposed by Microsoft in 2008, announcing that their Xbox 360 had surpassed the goal just a month prior. Nowadays, Microsoft is mum on hardware statistics for the Xbox Series X and S, while independent analysts reckon that the total units of both variants sold stands at 6.5 million.

Image courtesy of Hitech Glitz