PS4 Sales Reach 18.5 Million

Sony has been silent on the sales front for a while. We didn't hear much about the total install base as the company planned for a heavy fall release that was mired in controversy but still allowed Sony to come out on top. The company has recently announced that in spite of all the odds, they've now sold a massive 18.5 million SKUs.

Earlier in 2014 Sony had made it known that they sold through more than 10 million PS4 units. They had gained a rather sizable lead on the competition and continued trucking through with the resolve to become number one and stay number one. Microsoft tried to mount an offense in the latter half of 2014, and even managed to announce that they shipped 10 million units as of November, 2014, but it was all too late.

In a Japanese press release, Sony president and group CEO, Andrew House, mentioned...

The PS4 is currently being sold in more than 123 countries and regions. Sony gathered the 18.5 million figure from their own company investigation.

They also noted that there are more than 10.9 million PlayStation Plus subscribers. This is an impressive number... until you realize that this is a shared figure between PS3 and PS4 owners. They still have a long ways to go before they catch up to Xbox Live.

GamesIndustry.biz also took note of the attachment rate for software on the PS4. It's a heck of a lot higher than I thought, with the article stating...

That's just as impressive as the 18.5 million figure... almost even more-so. The attach rate shows that gamers aren't just buying a PS4 and letting it sit in a corner (something that happened quite frequently with the original Wii).

While I'm not entirely thrilled with Sony's first-party line-up of games so far, I do like that they have a very diverse selection of games outside of that. Anyone just looking to play any kind of game, from the traditional first-person shooter like Killzone Shadow Fall or Wolfenstein: New Order, they can do that, just the same as they can find games like Child of Light, Apotheon or Abzu on the platform.

There is also a wide range of games on the horizon with exclusives like Street Fighter V and Uncharted 4 on the horizon, along with games like The Tomorrow Children, The Order: 1886 and Bloodborne. Sony seems to want to offer as many games in as a diverse a range of genres as possible, and they aren't doing a bad job of it. Decent hardware with a strong software line-up without a sordid DRM campaign nestled in their past makes it apparent how they were able to hit that 18.5 million mark so easy.