The final total of PlayStation 4 console shipments worldwide is now at about 117.2 million as of March this year.
Since then, Sony has stopped reporting the number of PS4 console shipments. Shipment numbers are different than the number of consoles actually sold, so there may be a discrepancy between the two.
Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notes that there are only several other video game consoles that have met or surpassed the monumental success of the PlayStation 4. They include the Game Boy and Game Boy Color at a combined 118.7 million units, the Nintendo DS at 154 million units, and Sony’s own PlayStation 2 at 155 million units.
The Nintendo Switch has been a big success as well as it’s currently tracking at 111 million units sold. It will most likely eclipse the PS4’s lifetime figures soon, and certainly before Nintendo announces some sort of successor.
Sony is no longer reporting PS4 shipments which means the final total for the console is ~117.2 million as of March 2022. pic.twitter.com/hWHv7NZ6RL
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 10, 2022
By contrast, Microsoft stopped reporting console shipment and sales numbers for the Xbox One in 2015. The last reported estimate for Xbox One sales was around 50 million units, and the PS4 presumably outsold its main competitor at a rate of 2:1.
Of course, the focus is now on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The former is currently sitting at around 20 million units sold worldwide, while the latter is trailing slightly behind at around 15 million.
Consoles have been hard to come by recently due to the global semiconductor shortage. Sony even reportedly tackled the issue earlier this year by creating more PS4 consoles than PS5 ones, as they require less advanced chips and can be viewed as a budget-friendly alternative.