The PS5 is about to celebrate its fifth birthday, and before it turns five years old, it's reached an important milestone. While we're probably at least two years away from getting what's called the PS6, the PS5 has already begun to outpace other PlayStation consoles in lifetime sales.
Circana's Matt Piscatella revealed how the video game industry performed in September, with the PS5 now outselling the PS3 in the US. VGChartz estimates that around 23 million PS3s were sold in the US before its somewhat tarnished run ended and it was replaced by the much more successful PS4.
At least 23 million PS5s have been sold in the US
I say teeth, but the PS3 also performed better than most other consoles have managed to achieve in PlayStation history. Despite its problems, and the Xbox coming closest, and possibly ever, to winning the generation thanks to the Xbox 360, the PS3 still sold 87.4 million units. While it is the least successful home PlayStation console in terms of units sold, it is still the eighth best-selling console of all time overall.
Or at least it will be once the PS5 overtakes it globally. While PlayStation's latest console has sold better in the US than the PS3, it hasn't managed to make it on a global scale. Over 80 million PS5s have been sold worldwide, which means it's still 7 million short of the PS3. A number, I imagine, will be formed relatively quickly.
Piscatella also noted that sales of the PS5 have been tracking consistently higher than the PS4 on a “time-aligned basis” and as of September, it was outselling its predecessor in the US by 4.6 percent. In fact, again, according to speculation, the PS4 will be the next console that the PS5 sells in the United States. Of the 117.2 million total consoles sold in the US, 35 million units were purchased.
The biggest challenge the PS5 is facing in terms of outselling its PlayStation predecessors is, unsurprisingly, the PS2. Despite the Nintendo Switch's best efforts, more than 160 million consoles were sold, of which approximately 54 million were sold in the US. Despite the success of the PS2, thanks to the difference in console prices between its run and now, the PS5 has been the biggest generation of PlayStation in terms of revenue, despite already selling as many units as the PS2.
- brand
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Sony
- Original release date
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November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (digital),
- operating system
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Orbis OS
- processor
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Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- resolve
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720p – 8K
