Sony PlayStation 4 Holiday Sales Dip, Fueling New Console Prospects

Could PlayStation 5 be on its way? 

Aside from the speculation which continues to bubble up, yet another indication that a successor to the PlayStation 4 is imminent: Revenue of the almost 6-year-old video game program dipped this past holiday season. Sales of Sony’s PS4 system fell 10 percent during the interval, the electronics giant said Friday. Sony sold 8.1 million PS4s throughout its fiscal third quarter, down from 9 million in precisely the exact same quarter a year ago. 

And that drove lifetime PS4 sales to 91.6 million, surpassing the PS3, which sold roughly 83.8 million, according to GameSpot. The PS4 is gaining on the original PlayStation, which started in Japan in 1994 and the U.S. at 1995 marketed 102.4 million components. The PS2 was the best-selling console game system ever, surpassing 155 million units sold. 

Increased earnings of PS4 games and the PlayStation Plus service ($9.99 per month or $59.99 yearly), which gives subscribers access to downloadable games to play at no additional cost, helped drive Sony’s game unit sales up 10 percent to approximately $7.2 billion — roughly one-third of their company’s total $22 billion in sales. 

A number of the current hit games for the PS4 included exclusives such as “Marvel’s Spider-Man,” which has sold 9 million copies, Sony says, and “God of War,” which has sold 5 million. Music, movies and tax cuts helped Sony post profit of $3.9 billion, up 44 percent from a year ago. But the decrease in sales caught a lot of the attention, inciting the anticipation that was rising for a successor. “The PlayStation 5 is clearly on the horizon,” tweeted game website Mammoth Gamers. 

And the game news website Play4 UK noted that Sony had registered that the playstation5.pro domain noting that could indicate an “improved version of PlayStation 5,” or just that Sony is registering it “to shield abusing.” 

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida added to speculation in October 2018 although he said the company worked on a console but provided no specifics. Sony announced it will bypass the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the country’s biggest video game conference, scheduled for June 11-13, 2019, in Los Angeles. 

Led many to predict Sony might have its own event in 2019 and debut a successor. As reported at the time by Variety competitor Microsoft is at work on a successor to the Xbox One, the company’s Xbox head Phil Spencer said in June 2018.