Sony’s PlayStation (PS5) console was always on track to sell well, but the COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on its sales. The lack of supply impacted the flagship console as the entire world came to a halt. Now that everything’s back on track and its supply issues are over, the PS5’s sales numbers are picking up as if nothing happened. The PS5 is selling so well that it’s become the best-selling gaming console ever. At least, in Q1.
According to Sony, the PS5 sold at least 6.3 million units in Q1, which is a colossal figure that puts the PS5 on track to sell more than the PS4 by the time its lifecycle is over.
Keep in mind that we’re only 2.5 years into the lifecycle of the PS5 and it’s already sold close to 39 million, and it has spent close to three-quarters of its lifecycle being unavailable.
In an ideal world, the PS5 would’ve sold more than 50 million units and we aren’t exaggerating.
But, we’re not here to talk about alternative scenarios. We’re here to talk up the PlayStation 5 because of its sales. The only big exclusive for the PS5 this Q1 is Forspoken and it didn’t sell well at all. The final massive PS5 exclusive was God of War: Ragnarok, which came out in November 2022. The best-selling game to come out in the past quarter was Hogwarts Legacy and it isn’t exclusive to the PS5. And, not to kick the Xbox when it’s down, but the “lack” of its exclusives is supposedly a reason for a console to struggle selling, and the PS5 proved that this isn’t necessarily the case.
With Final Fantasy XVI scheduled for June 22 and a bunch of other console sellers launching around the same time, it won’t surprise us if Sony reported record-setting Q2 and Q3 numbers for the PS5 later this year.
For now, let’s stick to the facts.
With the way it’s selling, the PS5 will make up for lost time and become bigger than the PS4. The last-gen console is already the fifth-best-selling console with 117.2 million units sold. The PS5 is already over a quarter of the way there and with arguably more time to spare. As more and more current-gen-exclusive games hit store shelves, the PS5 isn’t slowing down anytime soon. And, this is before we find out about what else Sony has planned, regardless of whether it’s a PS5 Slim or a PS5 Pro, and most definitely before Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, and Insomniac Games, among others, come forward to reveal their PS5 exclusive titles.
TLDR; the PS5 just accomplished what no other console ever has before and, to reference Frieza from Dragon Ball, it’s not even in its final form.
