Sony's PS4 Has Allegedly Sold 8 Million Units

News
By Catherine Cai
published

Insiderp, the source that leaked the 7 million units sold landmark for the PS4, is now reporting that the PS4 has sold over 8 million units as of May 19, 2014. The outlet had reported the 7 million units figure at the end of March. Sony confirmed these figures two weeks later in an official PS blog. If Insiderp is to be believed, then it seems like the PS4's giant momentum in sales is starting to slow down. Still, 8 million units is no small number.

The site also shared some insights on unit sales for some of Sony's games, reporting that Killzone Shadowfall has sold 2.8 million, Infamous Second Son 1.4 million, and Knack is at 1.3 million (with approximately 90 percent of its sales through bundles). As far as first party games not made by Sony are concerned, Watch Dogs sold a respectable 1 million units in its first three days, despite a host of day-one launch problems. Uplay server issues caused users to not be able to log in to play the game, or even receive exclusive/season pass content. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes has reportedly sold over 1 million copies, and Destiny has reached over 1 million preorders on the PS4 alone.

Whether or not Insiderp's numbers are true, they certainly seem plausible. Selling another 1 million units in one month, at the momentum that the PS4 has had, isn't surprising. Not to perpetuate the console war, but it seems like Sony has a solid lead over Microsoft, which last reported that the Xbox One had sold 5 million units.

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Catherine Cai
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • clutchc
    Considering there are 7 BILLION people in the world, that would mean 1 out of every 1000 people has one.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    Flawed comparison logic. Some of those BILLIONS of people are not capable of owning one as they are from poor nations nor do they have the infrastructure to even play one. Then you have the old people who care nothing about the gaming and the young who can't buy one themselves. That leaves you the rest who are capable of buying one as well as living in an area where you can actually play one. So we are looking at far, VERY far from 7B people as a population sample for PS4 buyers.
    Reply
  • clutchc
    It was meant as a 'tongue in cheek' comment. Not a serious critique of the subject. Geeze!
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    Okay sorry. The way I read it, it sounded like you were poo-pooing the validity of the numbers.
    Reply
  • somebodyspecial
    So dropping now to under 500K per month with MS well below that. They'll probably be lucky to crack 11M and only if they don't continue to slow. MS's dropping of kinect next month will slow this more for sony. I don't see this as a very good sign for these as 20nm is about to ramp up on socs that will slaughter what K1 already is and it's ~xbox360/ps3 today basically. DX11 tricks make up for any shortcoming in bandwidth which isn't much anyway. With 70% of the time on mobile being spent on games and 40-60% of sales at app stores (depending on apple, google, ms, amazon) being spent on games, more and more sales will slide over to mobile. Also Microsoft's is NOT 5mil SOLD, just sold to stores. Sell-through is much less or they just say what it is for real. They already admitted capacity is more than demand (meaning piling up in the channel).

    Taking out kinect destroys half of what they promised with the console's marketing campaign. For every person excited about the price cut, there is probably another person NOT excited he's losing what he thought kinect would get in coming games which will now be shelved due to no kinect. It's a short term spurt of buyers for the $100 off, but in the end a net break even as you lose kinect prospects. Having said that its the right move considering if they wait they'll fall way too far behind sony and end up with a snowball they can't stop from going downhill.
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    13423603 said:
    Taking out kinect destroys half of what they promised with the console's marketing campaign. For every person excited about the price cut, there is probably another person NOT excited he's losing what he thought kinect would get in coming games which will now be shelved due to no kinect. It's a short term spurt of buyers for the $100 off, but in the end a net break even as you lose kinect prospects. Having said that its the right move considering if they wait they'll fall way too far behind sony and end up with a snowball they can't stop from going downhill.

    Actually, I'm one of those people. This was the console that was going to do for motion tech what the PS3 did for Blu Ray - sure, at the expense of console sales, but what do I care about that?

    I haven't bought either console yet. XB1 losing its mandatory Kinect makes me less likely to buy one any time soon.
    Reply
  • mrmike_49
    Every hard core console user I know has said they buy consoles 'because they just work'.
    They need no upgrading , can play a dvd, need no expertise or other software,
    and even have a remote control; You just turn on the console, put in your $50 game and play.
    It true. Both of them said that.

    that should be "$60 game..."
    Reply
  • CoachNickEllisRochelle
    I might get the PS4 for D3 RoS and a good driving game one day. That's me in a nut shell. If there's any of those fun racing titles like micro machines, or hydro thunder hurricane then I'm on board guaranteed. I'm trying hard to reduce the number of M$ things I have, only windows atm. Currently devising a long term plan to ditch that. Looking forward to that day too.
    Reply
  • mobrocket
    Good job Sony. And with E3 around the corner that number should go up even more. PS4 being the preferred console of destiny and their upcoming VR headset
    Reply
  • somebodyspecial
    13424226 said:
    Every hard core console user I know has said they buy consoles 'because they just work'.
    They need no upgrading , can play a dvd, need no expertise or other software,
    and even have a remote control; You just turn on the console, put in your $50 game and play.
    It true. Both of them said that.

    So I guess they weren't one of the people who had a DOZEN RROD's in a single year leaving them without a console for most of the year. Even review sites have editors that have had 1/2 dozen, so it's not like this wasn't commonplace.

    If you build your PC with quality components you don't spend time fixing it either. Yesterday I swapped in two new hard drives to replace two that smart said were about to fail, and while in there swapped out old fans. It is 7yrs old, so this is no shocker and the only other thing I've done is stick in a new vid card (radeon 5850) half way through that period.

    Today consoles are PC's. So they have the same day one fixes (xbox1 had a day one too right?) for some games that PC's do. If you don't play games at launch and just wait a few months after some patches come (in most cases anyway, BF4 looks to take a year to fix...LOL), you will largely escape crashing and have a great time just as you would on LAST gen consoles. Oh and the games can be had then for $5-40 on steam (I prefer GOG.com for all games but you get the point) after the new factor wears off. Many times that is mere months. Steam/gog etc do the patching for you, so even that is pretty much behind the backs of the users with no expertise needed by them. Being a PC user has never been easier. I mean 15yrs ago when I had a PC business we charged $30-50 for a windows install (with drivers etc, apps or games if they wanted us to do it, some came with a pile of 10-15 discs for installs) but today that's kind of a joke as even a complete newb could likely get done with it in under an hour. Win7 goes on with a few clicks and some personal info (date, time, who you are etc). A few driver installs later and you're done basically and many of those come via MS updates, though I'd still say head to their real websites and get it yourself after up and running (MS doesn't always hand out the latest or even the right ones in some cases). Nobody brings wads of games/apps for you to install today either. For many with everything on board, you might have ZERO drivers, or just a vid card as the rest comes with the board packaged up (ethernet, wifi, sound, chipset etc). Sure you'd likely update them periodically but I mean getting a copy of windows on a new build. It isn't hard.

    Like I said, it's never been easier to be a PC user. Aside from failures that happen for all (rrod for console, dead vid card for pc etc as examples), both sides enjoy pretty much the same easy road. But PC's have better graphics, deeper games and flexibility you just can't get on consoles (surround gaming, multiple gpus, upgradable if desired etc).
    Reply