PS5 hits 50 million sales, Sony achieves 14 million PS5 console sell-through in 3 quarters

Sony has achieved a new milestone with worldwide PlayStation 5 sales.

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Today, Sony updated sales figures for its PS5 family of hardware. The PlayStation 5 ecosystem has now sold-through over 50 million consoles worldwide (as of December 9) since its original release in 2020 (sell-through refers to hardware sold to consumers, not just shipped to retailers). This year's PS5 holiday sales have also set a new record as the largest November sell-through in PlayStation history, even beating the PS2's mighty numbers.

Looking closer at the sell-through figure yields interesting results. A bit ago, Sony published PS5 sell-through figures in its annual Games & Network Services strategic meeting presentation. As of the end of FY22, the PS5 had sold-through 36 million consoles. A bit of math shows that Sony has managed to sell-through over 14 million PS5 consoles in the last 9-month, 3-quarter period, with the majority of December's PS5 sales not counted in the figure.

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We can't adequately compare PS5 vs PS4 sell-through because Sony has not published those numbers, but we can cross-compare this with sell-in. The PS4 managed to exceed 14 million sell-in, or shipments, across a 9-month span for four consecutive fiscal years in a row, FY15 - FY18. The exact sell-through figures remain unknown, but this is a point of comparative reference for the data.

As a rule of thumb, sell-in is higher than sell-through, as sell-in includes shipments made to retailers--there's never a guarantee that an in-stock console that's on the shelf will actually sell or not.

Sony is aiming to ship 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year. It remains to be seen how close Sony is to achieving this target.

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"Achieving this PS5 sales milestone is a testament to the unwavering support of the global PlayStation community and their passion for the incredible experiences created by the talented developers from PlayStation Studios and our partners," said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

"We're grateful for all of our players who have joined the PS5 journey so far, and we're thrilled that this is the first holiday season since launch that we have a full supply of PS5 consoles - so anyone who wants to get one can get one."