PS4 Sold 6 Units A Minute, PS5 Is Selling Nearly 1,000

Games PS4 Sold 6 Units A Minute, PS5 Is Selling Nearly 1,000 Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. May 26, 2022, 07:48am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin PS5 Sony Just how insane is PlayStation 5 demand? Sony came up with a striking comparison in a recent presentation about the future of the brand, and the current situation of console sales.

We all know that PS5s are selling out instantly whenever they appear…anywhere, but Sony explains just how fast the system is selling compared to its predecessor: In the US, at this stage of the console’s lifecycle, the PS4 sold 80,000 units in nine days. The PS5 has been selling 80,000 units in 82 minutes, on average. That’s 6 sales a minute for PS4, nearly 1,000 sales a minute for PS5.

They also have a graph about “purchase interest” in the console one year after launch where the PS4 has 28% interest and the PS5 has 55% interest. Again, all of these stem from the fact that so many of the people who want the PS5 just have been physically unable to get one, and this is the only reason that the PS4 is outselling the PS5 at this point in both lifecycles. The “sales per minute” concept does not translate to something like PS5 sales would be 10,000% more than PS4 if they could only produce enough units, but it’s still pretty fascinating all the same.

The slide is titled “unprecedented demand,” which certainly does not seem like an exaggeration, and it’s easy to imagine that PS5 probably would have broken all console sales speed records if Sony was able to produce more units. Instead, they are promising shortages that will continue into 2023 due to the ongoing supply chain/component issues. Things may not normalize until 2024, the company says.

MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry The PS5 shortages seem to go hand in hand with another development , that Sony has started to realize they are shooting themselves in the foot by limiting their game sales to the PlayStation and PlayStation only, especially now in an era where they cannot make enough of the boxes. This seems in part behind their push to get more games to PC, and they’ve reported a huge surge in PC sales due to recent ports like God of War, and it seems like other exclusives such as Returnal are about to make their way to PC in a much faster fashion than past games. Microsoft has been doing cross-PC sales with the Xbox for a while now, and this is different than Sony which is doing later ports, sold separately, but they can get away with that due to high demand for their exclusives outside of the PlayStation ecosystem.

Expect PC to become an increasingly important part of their business as they expand this concept, as Sony says they want half their game sales to be PC and mobile by 2025. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram . Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls .

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