Credit: C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
- Sony PlayStation 5 sales set a new record in the United States for units sold in the first five months.
- This news comes from respected third-party retail analyst NPD. He did not disclose specific sales figures.
- Despite millions of consoles sold, there are still a lot of people who want to buy it but just can’t find it.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 is probably one of the hottest items on the market today. By the end of 2020, the console was so hard to get that an entire black market industry began in which scalpers could easily sell one for four times its list price.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that PlayStation 5 sales have just set a new record. According to this Twitter thread from a renowned NPD analyst (m / t ArsTechnica), Sony moved more units of the PS5 to the United States in its first five months than any other console in history. This new record comes in tandem with a previous recording, which saw the PS5 become the best-selling console in terms of total dollar sales.
Related: PS5 buying guide: everything you need to know about Sony’s PlayStation 5
NPD does not usually release specific numbers, and that is not the case here. However, Nintendo claimed to have sold 4.8 million units of its Switch console in its first 10 months in the “Americas”. As such, we can extrapolate that Sony has almost certainly sold millions of PS5s.
In other words, the PlayStation 5 is selling like gangbusters. Of course, that probably doesn’t mean much to the hundreds, if not thousands of people reading this who are ready to buy a PlayStation 5 but just can’t find one.
Thanks to the global chip shortage – as well as a supposedly artificial scarcity marketing plan on Sony’s part – buying a PlayStation 5 at its list price is still incredibly difficult.
It will, however, be interesting to see the final tally of PlayStation 5 sales in the years to come. Could it end up overtaking the PlayStation 2 and becoming the best-selling console of all time?