Sony PS4 Sales Surpass 6m Console Barrier After Japan Launch

Sony has just hit another major milestone with its PlayStation 4 (PS4) next-generation console, surpassing six million units sold worldwide to extend its early lead over Microsoft’s Xbox One. Just as importantly, Sony also announced that a total of 13.7 million PS4 games have been sold since the machine was launched, which works out to be an average of 2.3 games per console. The best selling game is Killzone: Shadow Fall, with over 2.1 million copies sold to date.

Sony PS4

The announcement was made in an official blog post by Sony this week, and its numbers are pretty impressive. As well as the 6 million consoles and 13.7 million games sold, Sony says that 94 percent of all PS4s are being used online – and to date these have generated some 3.6 million live broadcasts and more than 100 million social shares .

Sony hit the six million milestone less than two weeks after it was announced it had racked up 5.3 million PS4 sales. The reason it hit that figure so quickly? Because this week the console just went on sale in its home nation Japan, where consumers bought more than 370,000 units within the first week. That’s still less than the one million-odd consoles that were sold in the USA within 24 hours of its launch, but not a bad performance considering the population difference.

It’s not known exactly how many Xbox One consoles Microsoft has sold, but various sources claim that its likely to be no more than four million – well behind the PS4, in other words. The Xbox’s cause isn’t really helped by the fact that it’s never been embraced by gamers in countries like Japan, although Microsoft is believed to be planning a launch there later this year.

Perhaps the most important factor though is the actual games. Killzone: Shadow Fall seems to be doing an impressive job in helping to sell those PS4s – with more than 2.1 million copies sold, it’s fair to say that the game has enticed a decent amount of people to buy the PS4. It’ll be interesting to see if next week’s release of Titanfall, the first big Xbox One exclusive, will help to drive sales of that console as well.

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