Over 50 million PlayStation 5 consoles now sold worldwide

Sony has just revealed a major landmark for its latest generation of gaming consoles. As of last week, the PlayStation 5 has now sold more than 50 million units across the world and is now tracking just a week behind the PS4, in terms of the number of consoles sold.

It was reported that Sony officially hit this number on December 9th, 2023, just a few weeks into the busy holiday shopping period. This figure is even more impressive considering that the PS5 only reached the 40 million milestone back in July, meaning that 10 million were sold in less than six months.

The greatest portion of PlayStation 5’s sold in the past month came from the European region. Throughout Europe, sales in November increased by over 350% compared to that of the year before. Sales were helped further by the fact that the console was also discounted a number of times throughout 2023, as Sony pushed to surpass 25 million PS5s sold in this calendar year.

As most people already know, the initial launch of the PlayStation 5 back in late 2020 was plagued by both stock shortages and shortages of vital components for manufacturing the console. This resulted in it being regularly out of stock worldwide, for large portions of those two years.

This issue has now been steadily resolved, resulting in a huge jump in sales, particularly in Europe. In the United States, sales of the PS5 actually dropped slightly compared to the figures from November 2022. However, the reason for this can be largely attributed to the fact that by November last year, much of the short supplies of PS5s in the US had been resolved, resulting in huge sales growth on the console back then.

Some had feared that the initial disastrous launch might hurt Sony’s reputation with gamers in the long term, but this has proven not to be the case at all. This year, the PlayStation 5 has broken several records and quickly become the most purchased and most played console in many of the major regions.

Sony made a special mention of this unwavering fan support in its announcement, as well as also thanking and crediting the milestone to the talent, passion, and creativity of their game developers and partners. Without these two key components, the journey of the PS5 so far could have been a very different one.

Now, with the first full supply of PlayStation 5 consoles on shelves and online stores for the first holiday season since the console’s launch, it will be interesting to see which gaming platform ends the year in the No. 1 position in terms of sales and player-base.