PlayStation Updates PS4 Game Sales Estimate to 1.181 Billion Units Worldwide

PlayStation has updated its cumulative sell-through total of first and third-party PS4 games sales. The consoles' total is 1.181 billion, up by over 31 million from last month.

[lifeisgamesok]

When you create compelling games 9/10 times people will buy them. You don't need to make them cheaper than $60 either unless it's a smaller game

Congrats to Sony!!

[_SilverHawk_]

Playstation domination across all nations. I cant wait for ps5 day one

[nucky64]

me too - i'm ready to preorder and pay in full as soon as preorders go live.

[SyntheticForm]

I'm ready to refresh the page on Amazon all day.

[Muzikguy]

This js interesting because in the slowdown of MS gaming articles people are calling it always happens and contributing it to the next gen approaching. It's nice to see Sony doing well. I hope to see great gaming continue with the PS5

[SolidGamerX]

No need to lure people into a subscription service either.

[lifeisgamesok]

TLOU Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima and Final Fantasy 7 are going to sell like hotcakes too

[Traecy]

Oh yesss!!

[Gameplayer1]

A creative businessminded company,you Sony you!!!!! Can't lose that way,ofcourse they sold billions of games!!!

[Christopher]

That's a really good attach rate for a mainstream device. Right up there with PS2 and PSOne. I think the only system to have a higher attach rate than a PS console was the Sega Genesis.

[Muzikguy]

Another odd fact because last gen it seemed everyone was claiming 360 had a higher attach rate than PS3. Now with GamePass it will be even smaller attach rate come next gen for MS. We can definitely see where the focus is for those 2 companies.

[rainslacker]

And some people will focus on the fact that last month, only roughly 30% of the install base brought a game.

There are a lot of interesting facts out there. Some people just don't like to listen to them.

It's been a while since I looked up numbers, and attach rate has several metrics by which it can be judged, but I think the PS4 has already surpassed the PS2 and PS1 in the same time frame. Not sure what Genesis was ever at.

[Muzikguy]

attach rate seems pretty straight forward. Number of games sold divided by number of consoles sold. More than 30% bought a game actually, the numbers added that amount in. So if 30% originally bought one now 60% did. 40-70 and so on. Good numbers either way. Really wouldn't surprise me being around Christmas. Gift cards and all

[rainslacker]

Depends on how its being looked at. Publishers have several metrics they use to determine attach rate. The biggest one they use is average number of games purchased per year, on average. Not sure what that'd be for PS the past year, although Sony releases these numbers frequently enough to probably be able to make an educated guess. Chris was referring to overall attach rate, which would be measured by total software sales, by total hardware sales, and is the typical attach rate number that gets reported to the general populace.

[Muzikguy]

How would you get the average number of games purchased per year "on average"? You'd take total sales and divide it by consoles out there. Sounds like what I said above. There's no other way to do this. Some people will have 100 games and others may have just 10. There's no way to know that's why it's all an average. Just like attach rate

[rainslacker]

It's done more on the back end of things, where publishers have more concrete numbers which you don't see out in the wild that often. However, it is possible to get those numbers when there is enough transparency with reporting where you can extrapolate the numbers based on prior years information.

Publishers also look at a lot of other numbers besides these, such as active install base, and how much a particular genre or class of game sell on particular systems. So for instance, niche Japanese games don't sell well on Xbox, so they are less likely to publish there. Then we get into the chicken and egg scenario of if they published there, would more people buy them as the install base grows there or people who want those games purchase an Xbox....but that's another topic altogether.

For the most part, a flat total software sales / total hardware sales is usually good enough for comparison. realistically, the number is actually a bit higher, especially this gen, as some people upgraded to the pro model, but we only really know install base, not active user base numbers.

[Fraggle1987]

Thats what industry domination looks like.

[Gameplayer1]

Yup. And it's pure fact too. Any fanboy of another brand can say the opposite,but that would be like living in denial.

[IRetrouk]

Good, that means they will keep investing in games, that's all I really want from any of them really.

[Felix_Argyle_Catbro]

It's 1.181 million, not billion.

[MajorLazer]

It'd be 1,181 million then. Comma instead of decimal 😐

[IRetrouk]

Yeah hes wrote that wrong lol, that would equal

one trillion one hundred eighty-one billion eight hundred twenty million lol

[RazzerRedux]

Not following. 1.181 billion is correct. Wondering if this a regional thing. In the US (where the numbers are being published), the decimal is a period, but seems like I have seen this used differently in articles originating from other countries.

[IRetrouk]

Nah I got confused lol, blame night shift lol, I dont think it matters decimal or period tbh.

[RazzerRedux]

Get some sleep, ya damn workaholic. :-)

[IRetrouk]

Only another 5 hours and I can😴😂

[Donnie81]

Yeah bro PlayStation for life!

[moriarty1889]

UTTER DOMINATION.

[Hedstrom]

Impessive!

[BehindTheRows]

PS4 is a beast! ;P

[Traecy]

PlayStation domination!

[Thundercat77]

Mega impressive!!!

Even at the end of the generation, PlayStation still having huge success while the competition is reporting huge drops year over year.

[Christopher]

We haven't gotten Q3 from Sony yet, but...

https://www.gamesindustry.b...

Everyone sees loss like this at the end of their hardware generation.

[Gwiz]

That title makes no sense lol

[MasterCornholio]

Pretty awesome achievement.

[AK91]

Congrats Sony.

[MuhGamez]

That figure only averages out to ~12 games for every console. It isn't as impressive as people think it is.