We always knew that the PlayStation 4 had the potential to surpass the PlayStation 3 in sales, but we didn’t know exactly when it would happen. Welp, now we do.
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Sony has confirmed in its quarterly earnings report that PlayStation 4 sales have managed to surpass 82.2 million units, beating out the lifetime 80 million units the PlayStation 3 sold during its time on the market. This is a nice leap from the 79 million the system was at back in April, meaning that 3.2 million units sold throughout the late spring and early summer.
However, it wasn’t entirely good news for the publisher. It reported that it had 33.9 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, but that’s a slight drop from the 34.2 million it had back at the end of March. We could see a rise again as the fall/winter season comes around, however.
Sony also noted that 40.6 million games shipped over the April-June period, and digital downloads made up nearly half of all games sold, sitting at around 43 percent overall.
“Sales are expected to be significantly higher than the April forecast primarily due to higher-than-expected PlayStation 4 (“PS4″) software sales including sales through the network, the impact of foreign exchange rates, as well as an expected increase in PS4 hardware unit sales. The forecast for operating income is expected to be significantly higher than the April forecast primarily due to the impact of the above-mentioned increase in sales,” the company noted.
God of War, which came out in April, no doubt helped with boosting system sales. Earlier today, we reported how the hit action game managed to significantly exceed expectations, selling millions of copies and leaving heavy anticipation for a follow-up down the road.
As for the rest of the year, Sony is set to pace out the rest of the year based on the strength of Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man, which drops on September 7; as well as a number of third party titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 from Rockstar Games and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 from Activision. We’ll see where the next quarter takes us. But one thing’s for sure — Sony’s marching towards 100 million units for lifetime and nothing seems to be stopping them.
God of War is available now for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro.
