As PlayStation 5 hits its five-year anniversary, one PlayStation exec says it's now hitting its stride, and the console's biggest seller hasn't even been released yet.
The PS5 has sold over 84 million consoles as we hit its fifth anniversary, and that's despite ongoing complaints from PlayStation fans that there really isn't all that much on offer in terms of exclusive games. A majority of the early-days hits arrived simultaneously on PS4, while studios like Naughty Dog are on track to not release a single game until right near the end of the generation. That's not to mention a glut of canceled live service projects have taken up bandwidth at the likes of Bluepoint Games and Bend Studios.
Speaking to BBC News, PlayStation's senior vice president of marketing, sales, and business operations Eric Lempel says "we're really hitting our stride now," five years after the console launched, and that there is "a lot of great content" incoming. For example, he says the game that will become the best-selling PS5 game (currently held by Marvel's Spider-Man 2) hasn't even been released yet, saying, "I'm not going to tell you which one, but I think it's still to come."
And while "I think it's still to come" doesn't exactly feel like he has a specific game in mind and is more akin to your local SoundCloud artist posting "big things coming" on their Instagram story five times a month, I'd say it's pretty obvious which game is going to be the best-selling PS5 game by the end of its life.
Given that GTA 6 is only coming out on console initially, and the PS5 has sold 84.2 million consoles with Xbox Series X|S' last reported number being around 28 million, it's safe to say the game will be a big deal on the platform. GTA 5 is reportedly the second-best-selling game ever, and hype for GTA 6 is beyond any other game; it feels like a foregone conclusion that it will end up as the best-selling PS5 game.
However, in terms of first-party releases, given that the first Marvel's Spider-Man was the best-selling PS4 game, it's going to be hard for anything to top its sequel (even if it was an extremely mid follow-up). However, if there's anything that can, I suppose Marvel's Wolverine probably has a good shot at the throne.
Ghost of Yotei hit 3.3 million sales in its first month, making it a PS5 best-seller and putting it on track to hit the 5 million sales milestone that took Tsushima 4 months.
