Sony sold 4.5 million units of PlayStation 5 consoles in 2020

Sony sold just 1.4 million units of its PS4 gaming consoles in Q3 2020.

FILE PHOTO: Inside a GameStop store Sony PS5 gaming consoles are pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., November 12, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File photo (REUTERS)

Sony on Wednesday announced that it had sold 4.5 million units of PlayStation 5 gaming console in 2020. The news comes even as the company had struggled to maintain supplies for the gaming console last year, which also led to the company ending the production of the PS4 Pro consoles in Japan.

Sony, in its earnings report, also revealed that during the same time, that is, the third quarter of 2020, it sold just 1.4 million units of its PS4 gaming consoles, which is significantly less than the second quarter of 2020 wherein it shipped 1..5 million units. 

The demand for the Sony PS4 gaming console has been declining steadily. The company had shipped 3.2 million units of PS4 gaming consoles in Q1 2019. This steadily decreased to 1.4 million units of the gaming console being sold in Q4 2019. While these figures improved slightly with 1.9 million units being sold in the first quarter of 2021. It declined again with 1.5 million and 1.4 million units being sold in the second and third quarters of the past year.

The company, on the side note, said that while the PS5 sales looked promising, it was also losing money on every unit as the “strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were... lower than the manufacturing costs.”

Overall, the company's gaming division performed better both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. The gaming division's earnings stood at 883,226 million Yen in Q3 2020, which is more than the 506,638 million Yen that the division earned in Q2 2020. It is also more than the 632,130 million Yen that the division earned back in Q3 2019.