Three Years, PS5 Sales Performance Hasn't Been Comparable to PS4

Sony this week released its financial report for the second quarter of 2023 (July - September period) for the 2023 fiscal year (FY2023). In the report, it was revealed that the PlayStation 5 (PS5) console sold 4.9 million units in the July-September 2023 period.

Total PS5 sales before July itself, or before the second quarter of 2023 from the start of its launch, were reported at 41.7 million. This means that total PS5 sales to date have reached 46.6 million units.

The sales performance of the PS5 has not been able to exceed the total sales of its predecessor, the PlayStation 4 (PS4). In the same period, which is around three years after its initial release, total PS4 sales were at 67.5 million units.

Sony is of course taking various ways to increase PS5 sales, one of which may be by launching the PS5 Slim which will be released in several global markets starting this month.

For this year alone, Sony has targeted selling 25 million PS5 units in FY2023 (Sony's fourth quarter of 2023 ends March 31 2024).

In the last two quarters (including the second quarter of 2023), Sony was only able to sell around 8.2 million PS5 units (PS5 sales in the first quarter of 2023 were 3.3 million units).

In other words, Sony must sell around 16.8 million PS5 units in the remaining quarters, namely the third quarter of 2023 and the fourth quarter of 2023, so that their target for the 2023 fiscal year is achieved.

To the Reuters news agency, President of Sony Group Corporation, Hiroki Totoko, said that the process of meeting the FY2023 target for PS5 is certainly not easy.

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However, he still hopes that sales of the PS5 Slim console, as well as the "regular" PS5 console which has been around since November 2020, can help boost total PS5 sales in this fiscal year.

Count on the holiday season

For your information, the release of the PS5 Slim also coincides with the holiday season, aka "Holiday Season" in several countries, especially in the United States (US), which usually takes place towards the end of the year, specifically in November-December.

At Christmas and New Year, people usually buy goods or personal necessities as gifts for their children, siblings and family, and the PS5 can be included in these new items.

In Sony's fiscal year, the end of the year falls into the third quarter of 2023 (October - December), and in the third quarter of 2022, total PS5 sales reached 7.1 million units, more than the other three quarters.

In this way, it is only natural that Sony is confident that they can achieve the target of 25 million units for PS5 sales in FY2023, considering that the Holiday Season is arguably the peak sales of Sony consoles each year.

Apart from PS5, Sony also announced that in the second quarter of 2023, they managed to sell 67.6 million copies of PS4 and PS5 games.

Of the total tens of millions of copies of the game, 4.7 million of them were made by studios under Sony (first party), as summarized by KompasTekno from Engadget, Sunday (12/11/2023).