The PlayStation 4 is the second-best selling Sony console (after the PlayStation 2), and the company’s latest earnings report has given the most up-to-date figure on how the console is doing. Although there has been the expected year-on-year decline as the PlayStation 4 nears the end of its life cycle, the console has continued to do well, and has now sold through 110.4 million units over its lifetime.
Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, has compiled data from the latest Sony earnings report to paint a picture of the PS4’s sales over the last financial year, ending March 31, 2020. 13.6 million units were sold over the last financial year, down from 17.8 million the previous year. It’s expected that sales in the current quarter of the 2020 financial year might actually exceed those from a year ago, as COVID-19 means that people are at home and bored.
Lifetime sell in for the PlayStation 4 is now 110.4 million.
Sony shipped 13.6 million units in FY2019/20, down from 17.8m in the prior year.
Sony has not provided a forecast for FY2020/21, but is expected to be lower. pic.twitter.com/deffOX0tJP— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 13, 2020
245 million units of software were sold over the same period. This is down from 257.6 million the previous year, as is to be expected. This also marks the first time that digital sales have exceeded physical–51% of game sales during the financial year were digital. A whopping 66% of sales in the final quarter of the financial year were digital, which is, again, likely due in part to self-isolation and restrictions that came into effect in March 2020.
Sony sold in 245 million units of software in FY2019/20, down slightly from 257.6 million last year, as expected.
However what is notable is that 51% of full game sales were via digital download in FY19/20, compared to 37% in FY18/19.
In Jan-Mar 2020 digital ratio was 66%! pic.twitter.com/o2jTaKRbhG— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 13, 2020
Overall, this was a good year for Sony’s games and network services–the second best on record, in fact, lagging only behind 2018.
Sony reported FY 2019/20 Game & Network Services revenues of 1,977.6 billion yen, down 14% YoY.
The decrease was driven by lower PS4 hardware and software sales compared to the prior year (end of lifecycle), partially offset by increase in PS+ sales.
2nd best year on record. pic.twitter.com/acbOl6LvBG— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 13, 2020
Essentially, despite a slump, the PlayStation 4 is still doing very well. Subscriptions for PlayStation Plus have also gone up, hitting 41.5 million by March 31, 2020 (up from 36.4 million a year earlier).
While COVID-19 has impacted Sony’s revenue, their earnings report also says that there are no plans to delay the PlayStation 5, nor its planned software, at this time. We’re still not entirely sure what games we’ll get on PS5 when it releases, although we know quite a bit else about it.
The PlayStation 4 is now the fourth best-selling console ever, behind the Game Boy/Game Boy Color, which sold 118.69 million units. It remains to be seen if the PlayStation 4 will overtake Nintendo’s handheld; the Nintendo DS (154.02 million) and PlayStation 2 (155 million) are likely out of reach.
