Sony Drops Impressive Numbers At CES 2020

Sony broke from their usual platform of not going to heavily into games and dropped some great sales numbers and PS5 news at CES 2020.

[THC CELL]

Good numbers

[Garethvk]

Added the PS5 logo fast enough but staff has it. I was shocked they talked about it as honestly, the CES show is big on their other tech in the showcase and perhaps lightly mentions the system. For them to talk about the new system and specs as well as the logo was big.

[_SilverHawk_]

Playstation domination across the nation. I cant believe they sold so many ps4s and ps4 software.

[ShadowWolf712]

@Tric
Because Sony doesn't usually do more than pay the games division lip service at CES. For them to mention it, and drop numbers, and have Jim Ryan up there reiterating the PS5 deets to the tech world at large signifies how major the PlayStation brand has become within the company.

[bouzebbal]

Anyone has ps3 software numbers to compare?? I think it sold more..
I just see how many ps3 games I have compared to PS4. I have more than double.

[Kumakai]

Shocked they talked about revealing the logo of a console vs the actual console? Me too.

[Unspoken]

So they don't show anything and the fanboys go crazy....it's almost as bad as an Apple conference, almost...

[Muzikguy]

I love that Sony provides real, solid numbers. Not made up statistics that mean nothing.

[NeoGamer232]

So where was the PS Now numbers?

Oh right... Just like every other company they cherry-pick numbers that make them look good and ignore numbers that don't.

[neutralgamer1992]

Neo

Last time they said it crossed 1 million bro at $9.99 not $1 for 3 months

[OB1Biker]

@Airforce
Why would you not like real information and prefer misleading PR buzz words?

[lodossrage]

@NeoGamer232

Sony announced they were over 1 million back in October of 2019

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

For all the boasting about gamepass Microsoft does, for all the fawning over gamepass the media does, and for all the cheering MS fans have done over gamepass, they have yet to give official numbers. All they say is "growth" this and "double our numbers" that.

[Muzikguy]

Numbers do effect us. It shows strengths, how healthy something is. Not only that, who wants to be fed lies over the truth? I don't understand why people so happily today would rather hear lies over the truth

[bouzebbal]

You don't like to hear how many headshots fired, number of miles driven or number of times RT pushed within the last 2months?? Come on... I know you do

[DeadSilence]

PlayStation 4 is such an absolute MONSTER MY DEAR GOD!

106M Consoles SOLD, 1.15B Games, 5M PS VR.

[Garethvk]

Ultra HD Blu Ray and SSD. That new system sounds great.

[4kgk76]

Deadsilence@ the ps4 dominate this gen and ps5 will probably dominate next gen.

[TGGJustin]

Of course it's going to. Really going to make all these game writers who have been putting up all those "Xbox One Series X going to dominate" articles look silly.

[rainslacker]

That's an attach rate of over 10 games per system sold, which is pretty impressive.

[rainslacker]

10 is a pretty high attach rate. A little under one is the typical number. Through history, .7-.9 is more typical.

Attach rate is just an average, and there are several ways it can be determined, but 10 games per system sold is a high number regardless.

Most attach rate numbers you see reported are usually per first year of how many consoles sell that year. The full software numbers are not usually consistently reported like we have seen from Sony this gen, and even Nintendo has done some impressive numbers as well.

Yearly attach rate comes out to roughly 1.6 per year, which is about double the norm.

[Minute Man 721]

Mine is over 50 games per console last gen and this one

[rainslacker]

I probably have about 150-200 I brought this gen. attach rate is all an average of all users though. Some people may only buy one game

[ApocalypseShadow]

See? These are REAL NUMBERS. Not "just believe what I say" numbers.

Good job Sony. PSVR selling about 100,000 a month as I thought. Now at 5 million.

[4kgk76]

Apocalypse shadow@ 1 billion gun shot has been fire in gear 5 since launch ;).

[ApocalypseShadow]

Lol!

Microsoft gave up on that because even those numbers were useless. Real numbers that matter tell you the real story. Others will say why does it matter and will shout out "MS is a trillion dollar market cap company."

But somehow that never translated to winning or amount of games or best developers.

[moriarty1889]

lol.....good one....i can hear major nelson now.....’5 million laps have been driven in Forza 7 and 3 billion bullets have been fired in Gears 5 while engagement saw all time highs due to free gamespass subs and trials on the cheap!!! But we still dont want to say how many copies were actually sold or systems.....’
keep,spinning numbers while hiding maus and sales numbers......real nice MS. making yourselves look so silly and shady when companies reveal their numbers and are proud of what they have accomplished due to fan support. You owe your dedicated fanbase at least that much. Or is that to much to ask?

[DeadManMMX]

You guys keep going on about announcing numbers but last gen when they were behind Sony wouldn’t separate PS3, ps2 and PSP numbers. They didn’t report PS3 numbers until late in the gen. So it’s nothing that any one company does. The only company that was 100% straight up with their numbers even when they were unfavorable was Nintendo.

[galmi]

its n4g man, dont take anything here too seriously

[ApocalypseShadow]

You mean last gen when Sony combined their numbers?

Compared to hiding all the numbers? Giving no numbers but useless metric numbers until even those were worthless.

I see how they're so similar dead man. 1 is the same as zero. /s

That's some crazy math.

[solideagle]

basic Math skills can help

Total number - PS2 total - PSP total = PS3 (roughly)

[RazzerRedux]

"when they were behind Sony wouldn’t separate PS3, ps2 and PSP numbers. "

Do you think Sony was wrong for hiding PS3 numbers?

[gravedigger]

Phil Spencer - nobody is asking for VR

[rainslacker]

Don't need to ask when you have the option.

[Longadog]

bah..those figures means absolutely nothing until Sony can give the number of combos made or bullets fired in their games.

got to prioritize whats really important mate..

[PhoenixUp]

At least some companies still believe in reporting numbers

[Tross]

Well, there's no need to fudge numbers if their products are successful.

[nowitzki2004]

If you are getting blown out by the other team, you dont want anyone watching the game and knowing the score.

[AmUnRa]

When you are winning thats easyer, but when you get crushed by the other console, you have to invent fake numbers and boost them to look strong...

[IRetrouk]

103 million monthy active users out of 106 mill, wow, that's impressive.

[Kribwalker]

that does include multiple users per system and multiple accounts per users when people have multiple accounts. But you are probably know that, but you didn’t clarify

[CaptainHenry916]

You're trying to hard and made it obvious

[The Wood]

Leave it out brother. Microsoft introduced that metric because they needed a lane to swerve into due to unimpressive sales numbers then done a U turn and stopped reporting those too. . . . . .

[MasterCornholio]

At least we are getting both MAUs and sales from Sony do we can discuss it here.

[IRetrouk]

Well I mean yeah, like every other console in existence🤷‍♂️, I dont really see why I needed to clarify that, it's still 103 million monthly active users out of 106 million consoles sold to consumers, that's impressive no matter how you slice it.

[rainslacker]

Sony is giving almost every conceivable number to use for comparisons, so what's the problem? Very specific numbers as well. Isn't that good for when we have these discussions about comparing numbers, or just contextualizing the numbers to mean something? About the only number they haven't given is number of currently active systems with some form or metric, which no one uses for comparisons anyways.

[RememberThe357]

Would you make this comment if they were talking about Xbox?

[MasterCornholio]

@rainslacker

I don't really support using MAUs but there's really nothing wrong with them as long as you provide physical hardware sales. That way it makes it easier to gauge where the MAUs come from and it isn't deceptive.

[rainslacker]

@Master

I'm beyond a point of really caring for the rest of the gen. It's pointless to really discuss anymore. There's nothing wrong with MAU's, but numbers this gen that have been used heavily for discussion have been used without some context which makes them meaningless for discussion, or at the very least for comparison.

When you compare a solid number, with context, against a vague number with key information that the other data set provides not present in the vague number, it leads to a lot more pointless discussion which goes nowhere, because it's all based on postulation and biased assertion.

All I'm saying is that Sony gave us solid numbers. Numbers worthy of discussion, and numbers with enough context that can be discussed without a bunch of postulation or assumption to assert some pre-determined(or hoped for) conclusion.

To put it bluntly, if one were using the number sets provided by both for some sort of mathematical comparison to do anything important....like say make a business decision, or get a passing grade in a rudimentary statistics class, Sony, and Nintendo, are the only one's really providing meaningful numbers, whereas MS numbers make it more like algebra functions, where you just punch in whatever variable you want to figure out an answer. With MS, we're determining the process of the function by plugging in variables, instead of the just having the answer to the formula. Unfortunately, the variables aren't meaningful or have all the necessary data to complete the equation, so people are plugging in unknowns usually based on whatever outcome they want.

[IRetrouk]

The numbers look pretty straight forward to me, what's twisted about them?

[GaboonViper]

Same with Xbox then yes, all do you take a different view when it's Xbox numbers.

[IRetrouk]

Please provide those xbox numbers so we can discuss them, as far as I'm aware ms used to announce numbers, then they switched to maus, then they pretty much stopped giving out numbers all together, also context is important. These numbers provide a good overview of how the ps4 and its services have performed, cant really figure that out from the numbers ms was releasing.

[TKCMuzzer]

What and MS don't when they say so many 'users' have played this game etc etc.

[Christopher]

This is true of any metric utilizing account-based volume. You know, like people using multiple accounts to keep subscribed to Game Pass for $1/month.

[Kribwalker]

@Christopher Exactly.

[bluefox755]

I was wondering if you'd have the temerity to weigh in on this article, lol.

[FallenAngel1984]

Great numbers all around.

Sony just loves that rebranded PS3 logo font. They’ve used it for PSV, PS4 & now PS5. Doesn’t seem like they’ll ever use another font for the brand going forward.

[The_Sage]

I don't think you understand what rebranded means.

[RememberThe357]

Sony was selling the PS3 as "PlayStation 3" with the spider-man font logo across the face of the system and in all it's marketing. I don't think they even used the PS3 abbreviation at all until they went to the PS3 logo for the slim? I might be wrong about that. Though going from "PlayStation 3" to "PS3" might not be literally changing the brand name, it was functionally a rebrand of the system.

[Rimeskeem]

Rebrand: change the corporate image of (a company or organization).

Sony, changed the corporate image of PlayStation using a new logo and font etc. Thus by definition it is a rebrand.

[FallenAngel1984]

You clearly don’t if you even have to question me about that

[rainslacker]

I liked it on the PS3, and even the Vita, but it kind of looks off with the PS5.

[gangsta_red]

These are fantastic numbers. Good job Sony.

Can't wait to see what the PS5 will look like.

[The Wood]

I'm very interested in the form factor. I guess it'll be black. . . . That's all I can predict right now

@master

Lol , Could you imagine. . . . . .

[MasterCornholio]

It's actually a blue box.

:P

[gangsta_red]

Yeah, the shape of the PS4 was strange but I got used to it real quick.

I would love it if they went back to their original gray color.

[MasterCornholio]

But it is a blue box they already showed it at AMDs conference.

https://i.imgur.com/k17Zfnz...

[ShadowWolf712]

@MasterCornholio

Nah, that's just the LinusTechTips Edition.

"We Rebuilt And Overclocked A PS5 IN THE BOX IT CAME IN!"

[GaboonViper]

I have to give respect to that comment Gangsta, you have a bad rep on here but fair play for congratulations of Sony without no Kribwalker spin.

[SyntheticForm]

That's what happens when you have a consistent flow of great games throughout a generation.

[Immagaiden]

At a monthly active userbase of 103 million players, PlayStation Network is the largest gaming platform in the world.

[porkChop]

We don't have updated numbers for Steam, but you could be right. PlayStation is certainly doing very well.

[ApocalypseShadow]

I think he's talking about consoles specifically.

[Immagaiden]

Yeah we need updated numbers from Valve. In Jan 2019 it was reported PSN & Steam had a MAU count of 90 million by Jan 2019.

It’s safe to say that a year later the numbers may still be similar but we’ll still need new numbers for Steam to truly confirm it

[thejigisup]

Massive congrats to Sony on these numbers they really proved that good hardware and even better software is what consumers really want. Those stability updates really made sure this gen was top notch. Can't wait to see what's next.

[moriarty1889]

Sony continues to get it and dominate while ms keeps spinning numbers and then stop reporting them altogether. soon they wont even acknowledge there consoles or games exist. crazy.

[Garethvk]

Guy posted on the site that they were fake news and the Software numbers were inflated. I said well you have the worlds media there and many more watching at home. Plus those are the numbers given to investors and people tend to take a very dim view of inflating numbers.

[RosweeSon]

Every owner on average has bought just over 10 games that’s pretty good going.

[moriarty1889]

utter domination by PS4 and it will continue with PS5. Games are on another level. Hope MS is watching and seeing that showing numbers shows you have nothing to hide and are honest and forthcoming. MS hiding maus and sales of consoles and games has really made them look so shady. Unreal they refuse to be upfront withnthem regardless of selling less. Thats why alot of people dont trust them. Why hide official numbers of your product while pushing and touting the success of services like gamespass which is just a part of it all. It just really looks bad at this point especially when companies like sony or nintendo are up front with there sales numbers.

[BlaqMagiq1]

Showcases their domination. I hope the PS5 has this same success.

[TheHateTheyGive]

This gen was a walk in the park shut out, they ended the dedicated home console world of nintendo and totally destroyed xbox one, if i were xbox i would be worried about launching a console more expensive than ps5.

[Rimeskeem]

A 10 game attachment rate on average is solid.

[Benficaman]

I have a lot more than 10. Betewen the ones "given" by plus and bought myself, i have more 100 PS4 games. Go PlayStation. See you again in ps5

[ironmonkey]

Yep, both Sony and Nintendo just stating facts as always, come on ms at least put out some fake numbers out or some shit out so we have something to talk about.

[badz149]

fake numbers? you want them to get sued??

[galmi]

pple here really dont know how corporate business works lol

[Exvalos]

Sony looking to lap microsoft a 3rd time lol

[KillBill]

Damn I hate articles that just bait you to a video. if I wanted to just sit through a video I would have gone to Youtube. Edit: wait... that wasn't even a video. It was a screen grab from a video. lol

[FallenAngel1984]

That means PS4 sold 14.4 million units in 2019

[Dovergamer]

Microsoft, pay attention and please take notes.

You see Microsoft. You see what Sony did? They published their RESULTS of the hard work and dedication to gaming.

And you know how they achieved it? Sony SERVED the games.

[Thundercat77]

Results are better than shots fired, zombies killed etc

[DaniMacYo]

PlayStation!

[waverider]

It would be much better if they talked about laps taken, games rented, shoots fired, who wants real numbers and proving that they sold billions of games.

[Thundercat77]

Sony totally dominated this generation while crossing the 100m mark. I like to see official numbers and not some made up garbage like Xbox always does to hide their pathetic performance this generation.

[GaboonViper]

Absolutely incredible numbers, well done Sony.

[GaboonViper]

Imagine those numbers will go up when FFVII, GOT and of course the biggie...LOU2 release, should easily pass PSOne and become the second highest selling console of all time, and so well deserved for a brilliant console, can't wait for PS5 to be under my Christmas tree later this year.

[StoneyYoshi]

They just stated in the conference last night that the PS4 is already the second best selling console of all time.

[Fraggle1987]

Well deserved. The only company that has brought a good steady stream of quality exclusive software.

[gravedigger]

106 mil. sold-through. So, shipped numbers should be higher somehow.

Anyway, it's not even a PS4's worst year. In 2014 PS4 has sold 14.3 m units. Being able to sell over 14M so late, near end of the gen, into the lifecycle with next gen already announced shows that there is still demand for PS4 especially under 299.

[Max_Eckhardt]

Will another console ever surpass the PS2?

[waverider]

I was trying to do the math about the games sold and i just cant. The result cant be real. Its just crazy.

[Kumakai]

Cool but I care more about the ps5 than Sony telling us how successful we already knew they were. All we got was a logo.

[Thundercat77]

That's your problem. Sony never tell you it was going to be an official PS5 reveal event.

You sabotage yourself with your false expectations.

[LordJamar]

Good for them I guess I don’t hate Xbox and want it to fail so I was not jumping out of my seat for joy cause of this nor do I own any Sony stock I kinda just saw it as gloating and strokeing their own ego I mean like I said good for them but it was kinda useless to me the ps5 “reveal” was massively disappointing tho

[RazzerRedux]

"gloating and strokeing their own ego"

Never heard of Aaron Greenberg, I guess. Either way, seems you were disappointed in the PS5 reveal because there was no "reveal" and there was never supposed to be.

[LordJamar]

Like I said good for them they broke records I believe. It’s just kinda useless info to me just seems like bragging and ego stroke just my opinion.

Maybe I didn’t expect a full reveal but sheesh I expected more then just a logo lol

[RazzerRedux]

Every corporation that has stockholders brag about their performance, including Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony at CES was not about PS5. PS5 was merely a single part of their larger presentation.

https://www.whathifi.com/us...

[saimcheeda]

This generation honestly has been a cakewalk for Sony

[bluefox755]

Pretty crazy numbers. Well deserved though.

[Reefskye]

the PS+ gets me the most all that cash flow for providing a service that should be free, yet playstation as well as xbox still have terrible social interfaces that are slow and clunky. Sony I have loved your consoles since the original playstation but you lost me soon as your started to inflate your digital prices and blocking my internet just to play a game online. Ill play all your exclusives but you wont get a cent off me when i have a PC to play online and far easier and better communication programs.

[Thundercat77]

Good bye! You are not needed. I hope you honor your word and I don't see you ever on a PlayStation article or else I will call you out as an hypocrite.

[Garethvk]

Guy keeps leaving comments on the site saying I don't understand demographics and the numbers are fudged. I said well I only work with radio, newspapers, a magazine, film and game studios and television so I don't understand. I said if the numbers are fake as you claim; them why have none of the legitimate media or business media called them out?.

Almost as funny as the two Xbox guys who tried to start a fight quth with me on FB.

[PyroMessiah86]

Numbers don't matter to me just games. That goes for any console ever released.

Sony have good numbers now hense you can read them now. Though for 90% of last gen they were behind Xbox and didn't show much in the way of numbers at all.

Now the tables have turned everyone is like "Yay numbersssss!!" And "Hahahaha poor Xbox who don't give real numbers"

My question is why do gamers care if it's all about the games?

Yeah I'm an Xbox and PC user and you can downvote me for the Xbox part of that if you like. Though that won't change the above being fact.

[MetroidFREAK21]

1 billion games... Good lord