Lifetime sales have now reached over 38 million units (pic: Sony)



Sony’s recent successes may ironically be good news for Microsoft, at least when it comes to getting its Activision buyout approved.



Microsoft tried to put a positive spin on its recent financial results , but it’s apparent that its Xbox business isn’t doing as well as it could/should be.



Sony, by comparison, is popping multiple champagne bottles at the moment, as the PlayStation 5 continues to make the company a lot, and we mean a lot, of money.



The console has been dominating sales charts since the start of the year thanks to its improved availability, and new sales figures from Sony reveal that it has sold 6.3 million units in 2023 alone.



This brings a very lucrative end to Sony’s 2022 fiscal year (which ended this past March), as it has met its yearly target of 19 million PS5s sold.



Altogether, 19.1 million were sold in the past 12 months, making for a total of 38.4 million units sold since the console launched in 2020.



While it is still lagging behind the PlayStation 4 (which sold over 40 million within the same amount of time), the PlayStation 5 may very well overtake it if these strong sales continue.



In fact, it was recently announced that PlayStation 5 sales have surpassed PlayStation 4 on a ‘time-aligned basis’ , meaning that if the PlayStation 5 is on sale for as long it will end up selling more.



If those figures don’t illustrate how good this is for Sony, the PlayStation 5’s sales have resulted in PlayStation’s best fourth quarter ever in terms of revenue, generating 1,073.2 billion yen, which comes to about £6 billion.



Looking ahead, Sony said it expects to ship 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles during the new fiscal year, ending March 2024, which would represent a record for any PlayStation console.



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That said, Sony’s success can and probably will be weaponised by Microsoft. As you’ll recall, it’s efforts to buy Activision Blizzard have hit a setback thanks to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opting to block the acquisition .



Microsoft has already used Sony’s successes to justify that the buyout wouldn’t grant Xbox any sort of monopoly. At one point, it even said PlayStation’s games are inherently better than its own .



So, it can use these newest figures to further paint Sony as a gaming monolith that can survive without Call Of Duty. Although Microsoft has already lost the argument remains to be seen.



Can Xbox ever catch up? (pic: Microsoft)



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MORE : PS5 is selling five times more than last year as scalpers cut prices







MORE : Microsoft lashes out at UK over Activision Blizzard decision that’s ‘bad for Britain’







MORE : PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida thinks too many live service games would be ‘boring’





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