Sony sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 units in the quarter in which it was launched

PS5 game controller (Photo: Ronen Mendzicki)

Sony has released its financial results for the quarter that signed the year 2020, in which it also launched the PlayStation 5 consoles for the first time. As part of the financial statements, the company announces that Has sold over 4.5 million Units of the new PS5 console, thus making the current launch only slightly successful compared to the launch of the PS4 console in late 2013.

Although it seemed that Sony’s initial launch was particularly successful, due to the strong demand, which faced a limited inventory that was available at the time of launch, it now seems that this is not such a spectacular launch. Keep in mind that preliminary figures do not include the company’s home market in Japan, where the new generation of consoles was launched only during the first quarter of 2021, and yet, even at the time of initial reporting of PS4 sales before it, the company’s numbers did not include the Japanese market .

Sony reports 4.5 million units of the PS5 console sold during the fourth quarter of 2020, just slightly more (about 7%) than the figure of 4.2 million units reported in the first quarter for the launch of the PS4 console somewhere in 2013.

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Although this is not such an impressive figure on the quantitative sales side of the new console compared to the previous one, and although Sony notes in the reports that the new consoles “sold at a price lower than their production cost”, the company’s gaming division recorded significant achievements in the last quarter of 2020. 883 billion yen (about $ 8.4 billion), which is an increase of about 40% year on year and an increase of about 50% in operating profit, with a figure of about 80 billion yen (about $ 762 million).

The biggest increase within the gaming division was that of the hardware products, including the PlayStation 5, although the PlayStation 4 also continued to sell during the quarter, with 1.4 million units. The hardware department reported a 50% increase in annual revenue, with a figure of 337 billion yen (about $ 3.2 billion), followed by the digital division (software and games) with a 41% increase in annual revenue.