Sony announced today that it sold 5.9 million PlayStation 4 consoles during this holiday season, pushing total worldwide sales of the system to 73.6 million as of December 31. This figure presumably covers sales of both the standard PS4 and the PS4 Pro. This is down from last year, when Sony sold 6.2 million PS4s during the holiday season.
Additionally, 55.9 million PS4 games were sold this holiday season in stores and digitally (up from 50.4 million last year). This boosts the total number of PS4 games sold to an astonishing 645 million. Sony also disclosed that it now has 31.5 million PlayStation Plus subscribers.
Sony Interactive Entertainment president John Kodera added in a statement that December 2017 was the PlayStation Store’s biggest month ever when it comes to monthly sales.
“Thanks to the continued support from our fans across the globe, we are honored to announce remarkable sales during the holiday season,” he said. “PlayStation Network continues to demonstrate spectacular growth, with the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers surpassing 31.5 million, and PS Store recording its largest-ever monthly sales of content in December 2017. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our community and our partners for helping us achieve such phenomenal milestones. We promise our unwavering commitment to bring more amazing experiences to our fans, including exclusive games and innovative network services, as PS4 continues to flourish as the best place to play.”
The holiday season, as defined by Sony, covers the period from the end of November until the close of the year. The PS4 and loads of games were on sale during Black Friday and then again in the lead-up to Christmas, which no doubt helped improve sales. The holiday season is an ever-important part of the year when it comes to hardware and game sales.
The PS4 still has work to do to catch the PlayStation 3, which has sold more than 80 million systems.
Later this month, the NPD Group will announce the best-selling consoles and games of the year for the US, so keep checking back for that information. In other news, Nintendo recently announced that the Switch is now the best-selling console ever in the US over its first 10 months. Microsoft has given no indication as of yet as to how the Xbox One sold this holiday.