More than 97 million PlayStation 5 consoles have now shipped, according to Sony. Few consoles ever get near that total, and the PS5 reached it during a period when Sony was charging more for it.
Growth over the most recent stretch has been fast. Shipments went past 80 million in August 2025, then over 90 million last February. The console had passed 50 million in sales in December 2023, which means the figure has almost doubled since then.
A quick start
Sales were strong from the first months. Sony had sold over 10 million PS5 units worldwide by July 2021, and at that point the PS5 was the company’s fastest-selling console.
In June 2022 the console hit 20 million. It reached 30 million in January 2023 and 40 million in July 2023, a pace of roughly 10 million every six months across that period.
The PS5 first went on sale on November 12, 2020, in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Most other countries followed on November 19, 2020.
Higher prices, fewer discs
Sony made the console more expensive before this latest milestone. On April 2, prices went up for the PS5, the PS5 Digital Edition, the PS5 Pro and the PlayStation Portal. Sony pointed to “continued pressures in the global economic landscape” as the reason.
PlayStation Plus went up next. From May 20, new subscribers in select regions were charged more.
On July 1, Sony brought bad news for people who buy games on disc. The company said it will stop producing physical discs for all new PlayStation games from January 2028, so every new game released from that month onward will be digital only. The change doesn’t apply to games already on the market or to anything released on disc before January 2028. Sony described the decision as adapting “to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.”
A wide range of models
Sony has kept releasing new hardware. Between November and early December 2023, a smaller PS5 took over from the original model in various territories.
November 2024 brought the PS5 Pro. Sony’s spec list for it includes PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, 120 FPS, advanced ray tracing, 2TB of SSD storage, an upgraded GPU with “28% faster memory” and AI-driven upscaling for sharper images.
The strangest model is a Japan-only release. In November 2025, Sony put out a PS5 Digital Edition there that works only in Japanese. It’s priced at 55,000 yen (about US$355). The current multi-language Digital Edition sells in Japan for 72,980 yen (about US$471).