Somehow, some way, the PS5 has been an extraordinary sales success despite launching in the middle of a global pandemic that caused massive supply chain issues and continuing on today amidst an unprecedented memory shortage and economic headwinds driving hardware prices sky high. Despite it all, people are buying PS5s, and many of them.
Sony confirmed just this week that PS5 has hit an incredible milestone of 100 million units sold in its six years on the market. That's not quite as fast as the PS2 or PS4, but it's a much more impressive achievement when you consider one crucial difference between the current-gen PlayStation and literally every other generation before it. Typically, games consoles decrease in price throughout their life cycles, but because of the disadvantages outlined above, the PS5 has only gotten more expensive, right alongside its competitors, the Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.
So, even though the PS5 failed to hit 100 million units sold faster than its predecessors, it still reached the record for units sold without any sort of permanent price cut from Sony. And before you head to the comments section to point out that you got a PS5 at a discount for Black Friday one year, we're talking about official, permanent price decreases from Sony, not temporary sales from retailers. That is seriously impressive considering the economic difficulties not only Sony and other hardware manufacturers are grappling with today, but consumers as well.
You could almost, almost make the case for PS5 being the first console period to hit that sales milestone without a price cut, but for the mighty Nintendo Switch. The Switch hit 100 million units sold in December 2021, and Nintendo never lowered its price globally. There was a price cut in Europe in September 2021, notably just before the Switch reached 100 million units, but it doesn't feel fair disqualifying it from claiming Sony's title for a small, regional price decrease alone.
