Sony sold more than 4.5 million PS5s during the holidays

Sony sold more than 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in 2020, the company revealed in its Q3 2020 earnings report.

The sales figures take into account less than two months of 2020, given that the PS5 launched on November 12th in North America and November 19th in Europe and other parts of the world.

For context, this is as many PS4 units that were sold when the last-gen console released in November 2013. However, it’s important to note that demand has been far higher for the PS5 than the PS4, with Sony noting that it had pre-sold as many PS5s in the first 12 hours in the U.S. as it did in the first 12 weeks for the PS4.

However, Sony stressed that supply has been constrained in part due to a shortage of semiconductors and other components that are used not just in Microsoft’s rival Xbox Series X/S consoles, but smartphones and cars as well. AMD, which supplies GPUs for Sony and Microsoft’s consoles, has also noted that it expects the current-gen systems to remain in short supply until the latter half of 2021.

Still, Sony says it expects to sell more than 7.6 million PS5 consoles by the end of March.

Additionally, Sony sold 1.4 million PS4 units in Q3. This, coupled with PS5 sales, helped Sony’s gaming business achieve its best fiscal quarter in history with 883.2 billion yen (about $10.7 billion CAD) in revenue, up 40 percent over 2019.

Source: Sony