The PS5 has already sold 7.8 million units, beating the PS4's launch record

midian182

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What just happened? High demand for a product can mean disappointment for consumers, but it's good news for the companies that make them. Sony PlayStation, for example, just had its best-ever financial year, and it revealed that the PS5 is selling at a faster rate than the PS4.

In its latest earnings report, Sony announced that 7.8 million PS5 consoles sold as of the end of March: 4.5 million in 2020 (it was released on November 12, 2020), and 3.3 million in the first three months of 2021. The drop in sales was expected as Sony will have increased production and stockpiled the consoles (not enough of them, obviously) before launch.

The figures mean the PS5 is outselling its predecessor. The PS4, which launched on November 15, 2013, sold 7.6 million units by March 31, 2014.

Image via Daniel Ahmad

Back in December, the NPD Group said the PS5 broke the record for the best unit and dollar sales in a console's launch month in the history of the US.

It seems lack of PS5 availability and price reductions on the PS4 encouraged people to keep buying Sony's last-gen machine, though its sales figures are falling. A million more PS4 consoles were sold in the last quarter. That's down 28.6 percent YoY, but it does bring the lifetime sales to 115.9 million, cementing its position as the fourth best-selling console of all time.

The company also announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers have now reached 47.6 million, up 14.7 percent YoY.

The impressive figures mean Sony's Game & Network Services segment, which includes its PlayStation business, broke revenue ($25.03 billion) and operating profit ($3.22 billion) records for the 2020 financial year.

Sony's success has been mirrored by AMD. The company just had a record quarter despite the availability issues surrounding its graphics cards and CPUs.

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Personally, out of all electronics I've owned over past 50 years Sony has been THE WORST by far. I avoid buying ANY of their products if possible. In general, marginal performance and horrible quality is what they're best at!
 
7.8 million units sold - and 7 million of those were to scalpers.

Sold is sold... it's not Sony's fault if they are scalpers or not. The problem isn't the company for selling products (ps5, gpu etc.).... the problem is people who actually pay the asking price from scalpers. Companies can't control if their product is scalped (even if they only ship to one per household like you swear on) scalpers will always find a way to do it. The problem will always be on people who are welling to pay the price. Let the PS5 and video cards sit on eBay for 3-5x asking price and you will see how quick they start lowering them to msrp.
 
Kinda hard to believe any of this when Sony themselves said they had like 14 million units to go at launch then announced just before launch they only had 10 million units. So where's the 10 million at when only 7.8 million units were sold?
Anyone or any company can make up numbers these days.
I know, I'm pissed too about not being able to get one, but they did sell millions more than nvidia or AMD sold GPUs to gamers.... so at least that's something...

I'm actually so mad at nvidia and AMD stock and prices fiasco that I am looking to buy a PS5 instead.

P.S. I could buy a PS5 for "as low as" 600 euros on the used market, but I don't like the thought of paying that scalper tax either...
 
Personally, out of all electronics I've owned over past 50 years Sony has been THE WORST by far. I avoid buying ANY of their products if possible. In general, marginal performance and horrible quality is what they're best at!

It's hit and miss. My PS3 slim build quality was excellent. My PS4 was adaquate, and my PS4 pro was virtually unusable until I changed out the thermal compound and pads. The ps5 is supposed to be a big improvement.
 
Seemingly demand for electronics is through the roof since the pandemic. The remarkable thing about the PS5 success is the lack of many must-have titles behind the launch. There aren't all that many compelling reasons to upgrade from PS4 right now, but there it is.
 
Personally, out of all electronics I've owned over past 50 years Sony has been THE WORST by far. I avoid buying ANY of their products if possible. In general, marginal performance and horrible quality is what they're best at!
Sony had great product built quality, key word is had, my OG PlayStation still works, as does my PS2, and I can tell you I got tons of miles on that unit, even with the add-on HDD adding heat to the device it still works fine to this day. My release PS3 lasted a while but then died from the great console failure of that generation, I even had it in a purposely ventilated cabinet to keep thermals in check, stupid lead free brittle solder wasn't refined enough yet, the PS3 slim I bought to replace it has been fine since. That was the last Sony product I purchased, not sure how anything newer stacks up.
 
Kinda hard to believe any of this when Sony themselves said they had like 14 million units to go at launch then announced just before launch they only had 10 million units. So where's the 10 million at when only 7.8 million units were sold?
Anyone or any company can make up numbers these days.
You have confused reported yearly production targets with stock levels. Sony has never said they had 14 million or 11 million PS5 ready to go at launch (that's $7-8 billion worth of stock, no one outside Apple would stockpile so much stock of a single item). In fact they have never publically declared a production target for PS5, though there has been many reports citing anonymous 'sources'. A Bloomberg report came out in Sep which alleged Sony had reduced its target to 11 million for the year which Sony denied.

The only thing we can go off is Sony's financial statements and financial targets which have steadily grown the further Sony got into the financial year, indicating Sony has increasing confidence in meeting their internal production targets (but targets we don't know). So basically, don't confuse the countless 'sources report' type clickbait articles on production targets with what Sony has publically announced. Sony would get a caning from the SEC if it misled investors by lying about production levels.
 
You have confused reported yearly production targets with stock levels. Sony has never said they had 14 million or 11 million PS5 ready to go at launch (that's $7-8 billion worth of stock, no one outside Apple would stockpile so much stock of a single item). In fact they have never publically declared a production target for PS5, though there has been many reports citing anonymous 'sources'. A Bloomberg report came out in Sep which alleged Sony had reduced its target to 11 million for the year which Sony denied.

The only thing we can go off is Sony's financial statements and financial targets which have steadily grown the further Sony got into the financial year, indicating Sony has increasing confidence in meeting their internal production targets (but targets we don't know). So basically, don't confuse the countless 'sources report' type clickbait articles on production targets with what Sony has publically announced. Sony would get a caning from the SEC if it misled investors by lying about production levels.
Again they did as TS ran the article in Oct or Nov.
 
TechSpot did the article. So yea they did unless your gonna say TS made the article up.
Yep, and if you check those articles, Sony never released anything concrete, even Techspot puts "reports back in September indicating" with no actual source linked.

Sony never said anything but the media wanted clicks, get clicks by building hype, build hype by misinforming or downright lying to everyone. That's how's its been done for at least 15 years now.
 
I believe it was Julio Franco who did the article. TS can probably bring up that article where Sony said they would have 14 million then down to 10 million for launch. A launch window is typically for 3 months.
 
I believe it was Julio Franco who did the article. TS can probably bring up that article where Sony said they would have 14 million then down to 10 million for launch. A launch window is typically for 3 months.
I guess I'll do the search and link then...

Edit: Here are other articles by Techspot on this subject:

And you'll notice nothing is "concrete" in any of the stories.

Sony were just clever and never promised specific numbers or anything, just that they're trying to make more of them. It's exactly what I'd do if it was a global pandemic and I couldn't actually make enough.
 
I guess I'll do the search and link then...

Edit: Here are other articles by Techspot on this subject:

And you'll notice nothing is "concrete" in any of the stories.

Sony were just clever and never promised specific numbers or anything, just that they're trying to make more of them. It's exactly what I'd do if it was a global pandemic and I couldn't actually make enough.
None of those were the article I saw n read. One was from April which was nothing n the other was late Nov. The article I read was in Oct or early Nov I think.
 
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So I believe this was the article. https://www.techspot.com/community/...-units-due-to-soc-issues.265018/#post-1840469

It was in Sept. Looks like Sony had planned for 15 million units dropped to 11 million then to 10 million by end of March 2021. Bloomberg I think was confirming it all.
So if you followed the Bloomberg article, And I'm quoting directly from it here:

"“We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production,” the company said."

As I said, media needed clicks, PS5 news is big news, Sony playing it cool and quiet so what do you do? Make sh*t up to get people to click on said articles.

It worked, I just had to click on the article, although I do make sure to have ad block on :)
 
So I believe this was the article. https://www.techspot.com/community/...-units-due-to-soc-issues.265018/#post-1840469

It was in Sept. Looks like Sony had planned for 15 million units dropped to 11 million then to 10 million by end of March 2021. Bloomberg I think was confirming it all.
In today's times, you need to be more careful on what you read.
Article you linked points to another techspot article:
https://www.techspot.com/news/86007-sony-reportedly-doubles-ps5-production-10-million-units.html
which in turn refers to 2 other external sources:
https://www.bloomberg.co.jp/news/articles/2020-07-15/QDHQIUDWRGGB01
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Facebook-and-Sony-ramp-up-output-of-gaming-devices

And previous bloomberg article which as well have only 3rd party guessing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...aystation-5-output-to-meet-virus-demand-surge

Nikkei page mentions:
"Meanwhile Sony, the world's No. 2 video game console maker after Nintendo by shipments, has also raised production orders for its upcoming PlayStation 5 to around 9 million units, from the roughly 6 million units it had planned in spring, sources familiar with the matter said."
and additionally:
"Sony [..] declined to comment."
_Sources familiar with the matter_ do not mean _Sony_.

It is absolutely clear that this was only a gossip made by wannabe leaker. Sony has never said ANYTHING about production numbers, except “We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production”.

@Burty117 already gave some more information.

There is way too much of misinformation around (famous badly cited "we believe in generation" from Ryan) so lets try to stop it and not spread it anymore.
 
So if you followed the Bloomberg article, And I'm quoting directly from it here:

"“We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production,” the company said."

As I said, media needed clicks, PS5 news is big news, Sony playing it cool and quiet so what do you do? Make sh*t up to get people to click on said articles.

It worked, I just had to click on the article, although I do make sure to have ad block on :)
Yes but in the same article Bloomberg reporting turned out to be true. As there was not 11 or 10 million units due to supply/chip yields. That validates their report.
 
Yes but in the same article Bloomberg reporting turned out to be true. As there was not 11 or 10 million units due to supply/chip yields. That validates their report.
How? They come up with non existing production increase from some industry leakers, then they come up with non existing reduction, based again on some pseudo leakers. How is that turned out to be true, if Sony said they never changed the production numbers...

And no, Sony never said anything about numbers, call it 14 or 10 millions...
 
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