PS5 sales pass 90,000,000 but Sony doesn’t rule out further price rises

Thanks to Christmas discounts, Sony has pushed PlayStation 5 sales past the 90 million mark, as it tries to avoid shortages.

This year will mark the PlayStation 5’s sixth birthday and under normal circumstances, console sales would be dwindling while Sony starts teasing the release of the PlayStation 6.

But we do not live in normal times. Despite becoming more expensive than it already was, PlayStation 5 sales actually went up last year compared to 2024, with lifetime sales crossing the 84 million mark.

Sony’s latest financials show that the PlayStation 5 has also enjoyed a very strong Christmas, with an additional eight million sales throughout October to December, meaning it was a more popular choice than the Nintendo Switch 2 that quarter.

Per Nintendo’s own financials from earlier this week, the Switch 2 sold 7.01 million units during the same period. This is due to Sony offering very generous discounts on both the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro throughout the Christmas period, compared to the newer Switch 2 which saw no major price deals.

Even so, it’s still less than the 9.5 million PlayStation 5s sold during the same quarter in 2024, so sales are still on a downward trend. Game sales were up though, with 97.2 million PlayStation 5 and 4 games sold during the last three months of 2025, compared to 95.9 million games in the same period in 2024.

The number of active PlayStation players has also risen. This time last year, there were 129 million of them and now there are 132 million. So, withthe PlayStation 5 still going strong there’s growing credence that Sony could delay its PlayStation 6 plans for the time being.

Over on ResetEra, it’s been highlighted that the PlayStation 5 is keeping pace with the PlayStation 4 in terms of sales. At this point in its lifetime, the PlayStation 4 had sold 94.4 million units, with the PlayStation 5 just slightly behind at 92.2 million.

If’s still far too soon to tell if the PlayStation 5 will manage to overtake its older sibling’s lifetime sales (102.49 million), although it has at the very least outsold the PlayStation 3’s 87.4 million units.

Given the global memory shortage, which stands to impact all gaming hardware, there are concerns that this could lead to problems for all video game consoles.

During an investor presentation, Sony’s chief financial officer Lin Tao assured stockholders that the company has taken steps to ensure there’ll be enough PlayStation 5 consoles to meet demand this year.

‘As for securing a supply of memory, we are already in a position to secure the minimum quantity necessary to manage the year end selling season of next fiscal year [October to December 2026],’ said Tao (as transcribed by This Week in Videogames).

‘Going forward, we intend to further negotiate with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers.’

When pressed on the possibility of more price increases and the delay of new hardware, Tao avoided saying anything specific but did acknowledge ‘there will be some impact.’

Sony admitted it is expecting console sales to gradually decline, but Tao attributes that to the PlayStation 5 being ‘in the latter part of the life cycle.’

To minimise this, the plan is to prioritise ‘monetisation of the install base to date and striving to further expand our software and network service revenue,’ which hopefully means an uptick in console exclusives.

However, it’s surprising for Sony to be talking about a decline in hardware sales this year, when GTA 6 is bound to push units when it launches in November. Granted, there’s every chance it’ll be delayed again so maybe Sony is just hedging its bets.

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