Sony said it sold more than 5.9 million PlayStation 4 during the 2017 holiday season, bringing total sales of its home console to 73.6 million since 2013. That makes Sony the leader for this generation of game consoles, as it has outsold Microsoft by more than 2-to-1, and Nintendo only began selling its Switch console in 2017. Sony said the sales numbers are estimates based on its own records.
CEO Kaz Hirai announced the sales number at the Consumer Entertainment Show 2018 in Las Vegas this week. He also said that people bought more than 55.9 million games for the PS4 during the holidays in retail stores and through digital downloads. To date, Sony said this makes more 645 million copies of PS4 games sold since the system debuted.
The sales come during a different era for the console makers. In the past, they would release their system and then make small quality-of-life improvements, like better hard drives, to their design. But with the PS4 and the Xbox One, Sony and Microsoft introduced incremental updates: the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One X, giving gamers faster, more up-to-date choices mid-generation than they’ve seen in the past.
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and president John Kodera also said that the company now has 31.5 million PlayStation Plus subscribers. This is the online service on PlayStation consoles for multiplayer gaming and more, like free downloads of specific games each month.
