Sony has shared its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2019, ending December 31, 2019, which reveals the newest PlayStation 4 sales data.
According to the Japanese platform owner, the current-gen console has shipped 6.1 million units across the quarter, down two million compared with the same quarter the previous FY.
This result is not particularly negative but is in line with the Holiday 2014 window when the console was still setting up its userbase and software portfolio, which analyst Daniel Ahmad believes is a clear signal of the end of the lifecycle finally beginning.
That brings the total of shipped PS4 up to 108.9 million, with 1.3 more million expected to ship by the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2020.
PlayStation Plus subscribers reached a new high with 38.8 million as of December 31, 2019, up 2.5 million from the same period in the previous fiscal year.
However, software sales were “significantly” lower than the previous fiscal year: PS4 software sold 81.1 million units in the third quarter, down 6.1 million year-on-year. Digital sales accounted for 49% of those sales, 12% more than the previous FY.
Xbox reported similar results at the end of its fiscal quarter, which remarks the end of the lifecycle for both Xbox One and PS4 is genuinely approaching. Nintendo, instead, is still growing thanks to the launch of Nintendo Switch happening four years later than PlayStation 4 and a consistent first-party lineup.Â
With PS5 releasing in Holiday 2020, this is not surprising news to Sony at all, which is making its services’ offer stronger and stronger to lead a faster transition to the next generation of platforms, together with exclusive games that are expected to release since day one.
