Sony sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles last year

Sony has sold 4.5 million units of the PlayStation 5 until the end of last year. The number of PlayStation 4 models sold at that time was 115 million. Sony confirms that the PlayStation 5 will be sold below cost.

Sony says in the quarterly figures that it saw a growth of almost two billion euros in turnover within the game and network division compared to the same period a year earlier. It went from 4.93 billion euros to 6.99 billion euros. The growth was partly in the sale of games and DLC, but also in hardware sales because of the PS5 that came out in November.

The company sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the period to December 31, 2020. According to the company, it still aims to have shipped 7.6 million units of the new console by the end of March. This would make the delivery numbers equal to those of the PlayStation 4 when it came out.

The company also officially admits in the figures that the PS5 is being sold below cost. That happened because the company decided to sell the console “at a strategic price point,” where the price was lower than the cost of production. Selling consoles below cost is common with the release of a new generation.

Worldwide, 115 million units of the PlayStation 4 have been sold since its launch. 1.4 million copies were sold in the last quarter of last year. In the same period a year earlier, there were still 4.6 million copies. According to the company, there are 47.4 million PlayStation Plus users. Of the PS5 owners, 87 percent would have such a subscription.

Sony also says it sold 103.7 million copies of software in the last quarter of 2020. 18.4 million were proprietary Sony titles; that is 2.1 million more than a year earlier. Just over half of those sales were full games bought. The rest consisted of DLCs and accessories.