As of the end of the second quarter of last year, the PS5 was apparently just behind the PS4 in terms of lifetime sales, 84.2 million to the PS4's 86 million at that same point in the PS4's sales.

However, going into and during the November/December holiday season, sales dropped off compared to last year - selling 1.5 million units less during the last fiscal quarter compared to 2024.

So overall, the PS5 seems to be in a pretty healthy spot, having sold more units so far than the PS3 did in its "lifetime", but it has not done as well as Sony wants it to. It hasn't sold as well as the PS4, and definitely hasn't outsold it. And if the downward year over year sales trend continues, Sony will find themselves in hot water. With the economic downturn, sales of everything will continue to suffer, and I think something that will hurt the PS5 (and PS6) that a lot of console players don't think about is that PC gamers tend to also own at least 1 console. Many PC gamers owned a PS4 and a PS3 as well. But, with money becoming an issue, they're not going to drop their PC for a console. They'll drop the console for the PC they already own and accept that they'll miss out on the exclusives. And Sony already had issues with people not replacing their PS4s with a PS5. For years people simply weren't doing it. So far there are only about 8 PS5 exclusive games that aren't also out on PS4 or were timed exclusives that are on PC as well. And we're 5 years into the PS5's lifetime, which is usually a decade at most for console generations. That's not a lot of incentive to entice people to give up their money for a PS5 for. Why buy a PS5 for 8 games when I have the entirety of my Steam library going back to 2007? Plus, PC has its own exclusives. Practically an entire industry of them. The sheer volume of indie games exclusive to the PC means that you could play a new game everyday for the rest of your life and never spend a single cent on any AAA studio.

One thing that you're missing is why Sony games sold "poorly" on the PC, and that comes down to the port quality, the delay between console and PC release, and the price. Many Sony releases had/still have performance issues. And there was the PlayStation account drama, which probably hurt sales. Add to that that it's at least an additional year before a Sony game comes out on Steam, and then they charge full console price. Is it any surprise why they "sell poorly"? PC gamers have already had to wait a year or more for the game, they might as well wait for a sale for it to be at a reasonable price. But look at a game like Helldivers 2. The PC makes up a major portion of the player base. There's a reason that Sony said "single player" games, not all games. Games sell on the PC. PC gamers just aren't willing to accept the quality for the price that Sony was offering for their tentpole games. If we base the size of the market on the total number of games downloaded last year, the PC makes up almost half of the PC/console market: 857 million downloads vs 626 million on Sony consoles, and 546 million on Xbox, for a combined roughly 2 billion total games downloaded in 2025. The PC market is no drop in the bucket by console terms. We won't talk about the 52 billion mobile games downloaded last year.

Sony will try again if the PC market doesn't go in on buying a PS5/PS6 like Sony hopes, which I don't think they will. I don't think it will be anytime soon, but the line needs to go up. Forever. They'll cut costs where they can and increase prices as much as their customers will let them, but eventually they'll turn to other options, and the PC market is a low-hanging fruit tempting easy short-term gains for little effort.