Just last Friday, Sony Interactive Entertainment released its consolidated financial results for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2019. For the fiscal year 2018, Sony reported that it has shipped a total of 17.8 million PlayStation 4 units all over the world. This number is bigger than their expected sales for 2018, which Sony placed at 17.5 million units. This thus brings the grand total of PS4’s worldwide sales to 96.8 million units.
This makes the PlayStation 4 the 6th best-selling game console of all time according to the Guinness Book of World Records, just behind the Nintendo Wii. The latter sold 101.64 million units.
The PlayStation 4, however, can be expected to climb up these ranks, as Sony has stated that there will be no next-generation PlayStation that will be launched in the next 12 months. This means that the much-awaited PlayStation 5 might launch sometime in 2020, or perhaps even later. Sony also stated that they are investing an additional 31.1 billion yen in the development of its next-generation console, which some fans predict might be launched in Q4 2020.
In addition, Sony appears to have no plans of letting go of the PlayStation 4 just yet, as they predict that an additional 16 million units will be sold worldwide by March 31, 2020.
Sony also reported that is a 40% annual growth for the PlayStation Now, its gaming subscription service, since its launch in 2014. This rounds up PS Now’s users to 700,000 users.
The PlayStation 4 was launched in November 2013 in North America, November 29 in Europe, South America and Australia, and February 2014 in Japan. By December 2018, the PlayStation 4 had outstripped the lifetime sales numbers of its predecessor, the PlayStation 3.
Source: Siliconera