The PlayStation 5 is getting pretty old but it’s still selling surprisingly well. In fact, it outsold the Switch 2 last quarter even without the help of Grand Theft Auto 6. Sony told investors during its latest earnings call that it’s stockpiling memory amid a computing component shortage to try to repeat that holiday sales success in 2026.
“As for securing a supply of memory, we are already in a position to secure the minimum quantity necessary to manage the year-end selling season of next fiscal year,” Sony CFO Lin Tao said on the call. “Going forward, we intend to further negotiate with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers. Given the stage of our console cycle, our hardware sales strategy can be adjusted flexibly, and we intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory cost on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the install base to date and striving to further expand our software and network service revenue.”
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Sony will do its best to manage the current costs of the console so it doesn’t have to raise prices again and will instead make up any lost profit margins by finding even more ways to get its most loyal PlayStation fans to hand over their money. That has, in a nutshell, been the company’s strategy this entire generation. Here’s what else we learned from Sony’s latest earnings results.
PS5 outsold the Switch 2
As Nintendo reported earlier this week, the Switch 2 sold 7 million units last quarter. Sony just confirmed that the PS5 sold 8 million. That is wild to think about, especially because it’s not like the PS5 fall lineup was unusually strong. Sony was, however, the only console maker to steeply discount its hardware across the U.S. and Europe for the holiday. At $400 for the digital edition, the PS5 was actually cheaper than the $450 Switch 2. Of course, Nintendo did technically still outsell PlayStation overall last quarter. The Mario maker sold an additional 1.3 million original Switches, which if you combine with the Switch 2 sales, brings the cumulative number to 8.3 million.
Ghost of Yotei is selling better than Ghost of Tsushima
Sony’s latest blockbuster exclusive has been at the center of a culture war in some corners of the internet, but that doesn’t seem to have hurt sales at all. The new open-world adventure “exceeded the sales of the previous title in the same period of time and significantly contributed to the financial results of the quarter,” Tao said. It had sold 3.3 million copies as of last November and was one of the top downloaded games on PS5 for the whole year.
PlayStation users just hit a new record peak
Sony recorded 132 million active PlayStation accounts last quarter, up 2 percent from December 2024. Total playtime was also up 0.4 percent for the period. Since we know Sony has only sold 92 million PS5 units total so far, that suggests that a surprising number of people are still playing on PS4 (the 132 million number can include multiple player accounts on the same console). A lot of them might upgrade later this year once GTA 6 is out, though. If Rockstar’s sequel stays on track, PlayStation users will likely set an even higher record in December 2026. Do we need a PlayStation 6 anytime soon? It doesn’t feel like it.
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