Sony Interactive Entertainment has passed yet another ludicrous sales threshold, this time by exceeding one billion games sold on PlayStation 4. Just recently, the PS4 became the second best-selling home console of all time, surpassing the Nintendo Wii. As this new report shows, however, Sony is still selling both hardware and software at record rates.
This generation of consoles, including the PS4 and Xbox One, has hosted some of the best-selling games of all time. In 2019, it was announced that Grand Theft Auto V sales exceeded 110 million alone, with developer Rockstar’s other premium offering Red Dead Redemption 2 also selling at record highs. As for Sony’s first-party IPs, God of War, Days Gone, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and many others have sold upwards of at least a million copies each.
The news that more than one billion games have been sold on PlayStation 4 comes from Sony themselves, announced in an official press release. In the document titled “Update On Cumulative Worldwide Sell-Through of PlayStation 4 Software Titles,” Sony detailed the new sales totals for games on their home console. The most “up to date” projection from SIE says at least 1.181 billion games have been sold for the PS4 worldwide. Since the PS4 released back in 2013, Take-Two and Activision have dominated software sales. A conservative estimate would suggest that Call of Duty alone has accounted for upwards of 25 million units sold on PS4, as it was recently reported lifetime franchise sales of Call of Duty have exceeded 300 million.
The PlayStation 4 game sales, as reported by Sony Interactive Entertainment, officially account for all purchases made through retail distributors as well as online purchases made through the PlayStation Store. However, it is worth noting that no add-on content is included in these sales figures. Whether this means game expansions such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine or Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds were excluded remains unclear, but if these expansions were included, they would surely account for millions upon millions of additional sales.
The continued reports of impressive hardware and software sales across the games industry projects strongly for the forthcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Both home consoles are expected to launch in 2020 with first-party and third-party games. However, the line between those parties continues to thin, especially in the wake of reports that the PlayStation exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn may be coming to PC. This would be significant because Sony is traditionally protective of their IPs, which is something that certainly drives consumers to their platform. Perhaps now Sony is weighing the costs of including other companies into their first-party IPs, supposing that their already fruitful sales will only grow larger with the release of their games on platforms other than PlayStation.
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Source: Sony
