News PS5 Sells 10 Million Units, Fastest Selling Console in Sony's History

[Admin]

The PS5 has already sold 10 million units less than a year since its launch, unlocking the fastest selling games console achievement for Sony - despite continuous shortages.

PS5 Sells 10 Million Units, Fastest Selling Console in Sony's History : Read more

 

[sizzling]

Interesting given the shortage in supply. I’m just surprised it’s only 10m, doesn’t seem that much globally. As a % of global console gaming households that must be a rather small % of the market.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Interesting given the shortage in supply. I’m just surprised it’s only 10m, doesn’t seem that much globally. As a % of global console gaming households that must be a rather small % of the market.

Arguably most of that would be concentrated in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, China, and Japan. Maybe Australia too.

 

[sizzling]

Arguably most of that would be concentrated in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, China, and Japan. Maybe Australia too.

From a quick Google that’s about 3/4 Billion people. Does put some perspective on actually how few people as a percentage were impacted by the shortage

 

[Jim90]

Arguably most of that would be concentrated in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, China, and Japan. Maybe Australia too.

You can exclude the UK - while I don't check every day, all the major retailers have had, effectively, zero stock since PS5 release. I suspect the 'big' volumes/drops are going to very limited regions, which clearly includes Japan and the US.

 

[hotaru.hino]

You can exclude the UK - while I don't check every day, all the major retailers have had, effectively, zero stock since PS5 release. I suspect the 'big' volumes/drops are going to very limited regions, which clearly includes Japan and the US.

PS5 ‘comfortably the market leader’ in the UK with sales up 25% on 2020

All three console formats are performing well in the UK at the moment, despite stock issues, with over a million sold overall in 2021.

metro.co.uk

That's telling me otherwise. Though they were using an aggregate number.

 

[eichwana]

And what was the split between scalpers and legitimate customers?

 

[Jim90]

PS5 ‘comfortably the market leader’ in the UK with sales up 25% on 2020

All three console formats are performing well in the UK at the moment, despite stock issues, with over a million sold overall in 2021.

metro.co.uk

That's telling me otherwise. Though they were using an aggregate number.

If 99.99...% of the time results in a "no stock" return from any search (as has, effectively, been the case since launch) then Joe public will rightly assume zero stock availability. That's pretty much what I've been seeing here in the UK. No sane individual is going to want to refresh multiple pages ad infinitum, or wait at first dawn opening on every 'apparent' drop announcement, or, pay scalper prices - there are more important things in life.
I'm sure we'd all be interested in a breakdown, by Sony, of exactly where in the world and in which stores these units are being sold. Note, however, that their marketing will never admit if(!!) they are primarily focussing on a limited number of destinations (US & Japan?), and as we all know, marketing can influence many media outlets i.e. remember that pinch of salt.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I finally scored a PS5 by spamming the "add to cart" button on the Walmart app when they had their most recent drop.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If 99.99...% of the time results in a "no stock" return from any search (as has, effectively, been the case since launch) then Joe public will rightly assume zero stock availability. That's pretty much what I've been seeing here in the UK. No sane individual is going to want to refresh multiple pages ad infinitum, or wait at first dawn opening on every 'apparent' drop announcement, or, pay scalper prices - there are more important things in life.

And as far as I can tell from my friends who have a PS5, all they did was wait on Sony's website when they said they would have a drop, opened as many browsers as they could, and needed to only wait a few hours if not immediately in one case before they were picked.

This is a hot ticket item still. If you're not willing to go a little beyond the extra mile in obtaining one, someone else will.

I'm sure we'd all be interested in a breakdown, by Sony, of exactly where in the world and in which stores these units are being sold. Note, however, that their marketing will never admit if(!!) they are primarily focussing on a limited number of destinations (US & Japan?), and as we all know, marketing can influence many media outlets i.e. remember that pinch of salt.

And honestly, I'd expect this. Japan is their home territory and the US has a considerably larger population than the UK.

 

[thisisaname]

Only just sold 10 million when it sold 4.5 million in 2020 (in just under 7 weeks),
Then 5.5 in just under 7 months that looks to me they have been very supply constrained.

 

[vern72]

If they sold 10 million units so far, I'm just wondering how many more need to be sold to fill the demand?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

If they sold 10 million units so far, I'm just wondering how many more need to be sold to fill the demand?

A ton because it's so bad right now that even a used Playstation 4 and PS4 Pro are worth more than they were new. In fact I haven't seen a NIB Playstation 4 at any of the big box stores.

 

[velocityg4]

Interesting given the shortage in supply. I’m just surprised it’s only 10m, doesn’t seem that much globally. As a % of global console gaming households that must be a rather small % of the market.

It doesn't surprise me much. Given so many tech companies with record sales. I think there's a misunderstanding of what this supply shortage is.

It seems to me there's a shortage in terms of insufficient components to meet current high demand. There isn't a shortage in terms of yearly component output. As in 2020/2021 didn't have lower output than 2019 or earlier. It's probably higher as factories are at peak capacity with more coming online as quickly as possible.

At least that's what I infer. Without looking into industry wide yearly silicon production.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It doesn't surprise me much. Given so many tech companies with record sales. I think there's a misunderstanding of what this supply shortage is.

It seems to me there's a shortage in terms of insufficient components to meet current high demand. There isn't a shortage in terms of yearly component output. As in 2020/2021 didn't have lower output than 2019 or earlier. It's probably higher as factories are at peak capacity with more coming online as quickly as possible.

At least that's what I infer. Without looking into industry wide yearly silicon production.

I would argue it's also expected that within the early months/years of the product's life time, there will be a demand surge. One can look up throughout the console generations when gaming went mainstream (I'd say in the latter half of the 90s) and find that every console has had supply issues due to early life time demand surges. And as more and more people get into gaming, or at least we have a global event that makes us stay at home more often, those demand surges are going to continue to be a problem.

Plus large companies like to play it safe. They stick with historical data and plan around that. And no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, as they say. Sure they could go "to hell with that, we'll make a billion!" and then end up sitting on a pile of unsold stock (which I guess is laughable considering the high demand for such products). There are also other things that overstocking the first run may do that I'd argue isn't good for a product during its life cycle.

• If there's a hardware issue, it's likely in all of them. Imagine having to recall every single unit. Say Sony made 150 million PS5s before launching the system. That's a lot of consoles to fix if there's a problem. Well, it's sure a lot less than 10 million in the current first run
• They can't make mid-life tweaks or upgrades. If we used the previous iterations of the PlayStation, no slims, no pros, no using integrated components (at some point, the PS2's CPU and GPU merged into a single package), no using components that had process node shrinks over time (the PS3's numerous revisions).

 

[Jim90]

This is a hot ticket item still. If you're not willing to go a little beyond the extra mile in obtaining one, someone else will.

Trust me, most folk here have crossed that "extra mile", unfortunately to no avail. The PS5 - quite simply - is as rare as Hen's Teeth in my neck of the woods.

And honestly, I'd expect this. Japan is their home territory and the US has a considerably larger population than the UK.

I repeat - I'll underline the accents...
I'm sure we'd all be interested in a breakdown, by Sony, of exactly where in the world and in which stores these units are being sold. Note, however, that their marketing will never admit if(!!) they are primarily focussing on a limited number of destinations (US & Japan?), and as we all know, marketing can influence many media outlets i.e. remember that pinch of salt.
--> 'drops' elsewhere are extremely limited! - it's pretty clear by now that e.g. Microcenters in the US are in a fortunate position, in comparison to elsewhere!
I do suspect that AMD still have contractual obligations to fulfill with Sony and MS, unfortunately.
Of course, well done if you have been successful.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I'm sure we'd all be interested in a breakdown, by Sony, of exactly where in the world and in which stores these units are being sold. Note, however, that their marketing will never admit if(!!) they are primarily focussing on a limited number of destinations (US & Japan?), and as we all know, marketing can influence many media outlets i.e. remember that pinch of salt.
--> 'drops' elsewhere are extremely limited! - it's pretty clear by now that e.g. Microcenters in the US are in a fortunate position, in comparison to elsewhere!
I do suspect that AMD still have contractual obligations to fulfill with Sony and MS, unfortunately.
Of course, well done if you have been successful.

You don't have to ask Sony or Microsoft for this data. There's several organizations tracking this data.

EDIT: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...ies-sold-800-000-consoles-in-the-uk-last-year. 450,000 PS5s were sold in the UK as of March 2021, according to that.

If we find some global sales figure, https://www.protocol.com/sony-ps5-sales reported 8 million by April 2021. So the UK represents give or take 5% of the PS5's sold as of late April.

I mean I guess you could feel vindicated in your concern, but then I have to wonder how many hurdles does Sony have to go through to sell a PS5 in Europe, considering they tend to cater to Europe as a whole rather than per country.

As an example of hurdles, take for instance of the PS4 in Brazil. It launched at the equivalent of around $1850 USD due to import taxes. As you can imagine, I'm sure the sales of the PS4 weren't all that high as it was in the rest of the world.