Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed that its PS5 console had sold 59.2 million units as of March 31, slightly below Sony’s own forecast.
How does it stack against PS5’s predecessor in a time-aligned comparison, though? According to Daniel Ahmad from Niko Partners, the PlayStation 4 was ahead with 60 million units at this time after its launch. On the bright side, Niko Partners estimates that PS5 sold five times as much as Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and X consoles in the last quarter.
The takeaway from all this is that the PlayStation 5 is eating into Xbox’s share of the console market, but it is not enough to even match the sales of previous generations of hardware. As noted by Microsoft, the console market has been stagnant for years, and with game budgets constantly on the rise, the only option is to go multi-platform.
That’s exactly what Sony plans to do with its first-party games, and the incredible success of Helldivers 2 certainly confirms the validity of that choice. Arrowhead’s game launched day and date on PS5 and PC, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation exclusive ever with 12 million sold in 12 weeks. We’ll see if Sony eventually opts to launch all its tentpole franchises simultaneously on both PS5 and PC going forward.
Meanwhile, Circana’s Mat Piscatella shared some other interesting data. Circana is focused on the US market, and Piscatella said the PlayStation 5 is 7% ahead of the PlayStation 4 and 66% ahead of the PlayStation 3 in the United States.
Piscatella also provided a brief update on the PlayStation Portal sales. The handheld cloud companion device to PS5 is apparently doing ‘better than expected’; while sales are not massive, they are ‘pretty good’, according to the analyst.
In our PlayStation Portal review, Kai Tatsumoto wrote:
Sony’s new dedicated remote play device provides a pixel perfect gaming experience no matter where you are in relation to your PlayStation 5 console. However, the PlayStation Portal offers little more than that singular experience.
