Sony misses historic 25 million PS5 sales target, reduces console forecast

Sony misses its holiday PlayStation 5 sales target and has now reduced its total-year hardware forecast by 4 million units.

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The PS5 just can't seem to catch up to the PS4. Sony today announced its Q3'FY23 earnings and gave an update on total PlayStation console sales. The company expected to sell 25 million consoles throughout FY23--an incredibly ambitious record-breaking number that would've made history for the PlayStation brand.

Sony has now downwardly adjusted this target to 21 million units following the console's holiday performance, when it was made clear that the company wouldn't achieve the lofty goal. Throughout the Holiday 2023 period, Sony shipped 8.2 million PlayStation 5 consoles, pushing total PS5 shipments to 54.8 million.

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On a launch-aligned basis, which compares the total cumulative shipments across the PS5's current 13-quarter lifetime, the PlayStation 4 shipped 57.3 million compared to the PS5's 54.8 million.

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Sony's best-selling last-gen PS4 console is beating the current-gen PS5 by 2.5 million units. FY23 was supposed to be the year that PS5 overlapped the PS4 in all major metrics, including unit sales, on this aligned basis.

In the earnings video call with investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki also said that the PS5 is entering the latter stage of its lifecycle, and sales are expected to "gradually decline" throughout the next fiscal year (FY24).

Rumors suggest that Sony is planning to release a PlayStation 5 Pro model in 2024, however these plans seem iffy given the current sales miss, the economic conditions facing the video games industry, and Totoki's comments about lower PS5 shipments throughout the year.