PlayStation 4 Joins A Very Exclusive Club Today
Sony has delivered its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, and in them, it revealed that the PlayStation 4 has hit a major milestone. With 3.2 million units sold during the quarter, the PlayStation 4 has now hit 100 million units sold since it launched in 2013. Only a handful of consoles in gaming history have managed to hit the 100 million mark, so the PS4 is joining an exclusive club today.
The PS4 joins the original PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, and the Wii as one the four home consoles that have surpassed 100 million units sold. If we expand that to include handhelds as well, then the addition of the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy bring the total number of systems to hit that mark up to a mere six. Make no mistake, hitting 100 million units sold is a rare thing in the gaming industry, so Sony executives certainly have reason to be happy today.
This makes PlayStation 4 the fastest home console to reach 100 million unit sell in.
Faster than both the PS2 and Wii which were just behind.
It took PS2 a total of five years and 9 months. PS4 was just 5 years and 7 months. pic.twitter.com/g4Bk8sckYf
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) July 30, 2019
Things get even more interesting when you consider how quickly the PS4 hit 100 million units sold. According to Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad, the PlayStation 4 hit 100 million faster than the PS2 and the Wii did. It barely beat out the PlayStation 2 on that front, as the PS4 took five years and seven months while the PS2 took five years and nine months.
Does that mean the PS4 is going to surpass the total sales of the Wii and PS2? Barring an abrupt drop off in sales, the PS4 will almost certainly top the Wii – according to Nintendo's own numbers, the Wii sold 101.63 million units lifetime, and with the PS5 not launching until sometime in 2020, the PS4 probably has at least a year to surpass that.
Beating the PS2 is another story entirely, because at 155 million units sold, it's the best-selling console of all time. The PS2 continued to see strong sales long after the launch of the PlayStation 3, so unless the same holds true for the PS4 in the next generation, it probably won't be able to beat (or even meet) the PS2's record.
In any case, Sony's financial report also says that Q1 saw 42.9 million software sales, with the digital download ratio for full games climbing to 53%. That's a sizable increase over the 45% ratio we saw in Q4 2018, so it seems that more and more people are buying games digitally. Finally, there are 36.2 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, which is down slightly from Q4 2018's 36.4 million.