Sony reveals PlayStation 4 has sold 18 million units
Sony has today revealed extensive sales figures for the PlayStation 4, something that the Japanese company is usually rather secretive about. According to a press release, the PlayStation 4 has now sold a total of 18.5 million units worldwide as of January 2015. This followed a very strong holiday period in which more than 4 million consoles were sold prompting Sony to herald the PlayStation 4 as “fastest and strongest growth in PlayStation hardware history.”
“We are absolutely delighted that so many customers around the globe have continued to select PS4 as their console of choice throughout this holiday season,” said Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “We will continue to reinforce and deliver additional value on PS4 as the best place to play, by bringing even more exciting content and by enriching our wide array of service offerings.”
However, it is currently unknown exactly how these figures compare with the console’s main rival as Microsoft has not released any sales figures for the Xbox One since before Christmas. Sony’s latest piece of hardware has generally outsold the Xbox One though, apart from a brief period in November of 2014 when Microsoft’s own home entertainment system outperformed their rivals by more than 3 to 1. This was largely put down to a strong holiday line-up, including Halo: The Master Chief Collection, from Microsoft and a recent price cut of $50.
The press release from Sony also revealed that a total of 10.9 million users had signed up for PlayStation Plus since it’s launch, up from around 7 million in November. Furthermore, the data also indicated that software sales for the PlayStation 4 had been performing strongly. Physical and downloadable sales form PlayStation 4 games reached 81.8 million copies sold, with 17.8 million of those coming over the Christmas period.