Sony Interactive Entertainment has shipped fewer PlayStation 5 consoles than forecasted in the past twelve months owing to the ongoing supply constraints.
According to its FY21 financial report from earlier today, Sony sold 11.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles between April 2021 and March 2022. The sale number falls short by 3.3 million consoles, meaning that Sony failed to meet its initial target of selling up to 14.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles during the same period.
PlayStation 5 narrowly outsold PlayStation 4 during its launch year with 7.8 million against 7.6 million consoles. Sony was looking to do the same for the second year by shipping 14.8 million consoles to exceed the number of PlayStation 4 consoles shipped for the same period.
That being said, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan made it clear last year that global supply chain issues will continue to be a challenge in 2022, something which has been impacting PlayStation 5 since its launch in 2020.
The total number of PlayStation 5 consoles sold has now tipped 19.3 million. It should be noted that PlayStation 4 took around 15 months to reach 20 million lifetime sales. PlayStation 5 remains to match the whole 20 million figure in 16 months. The previous-generation console was hence ahead in sales for the same period.
The latest financials also confirmed a slight drop in PlayStation Plus subscribers compared to the previous fiscal year with 47.4 million against 47.6 million subscribers. The monthly active users were also down by 3 million compared to the previous fiscal year.
Sony expects PlayStation Plus to see a business boost of 34 percent during FY22. The company is banking on increased hardware sales, as well as first- and third-party games.
Sony will also be launching its overhauled multi-tiered PlayStation Plus in the coming months which offers downloadable games including classics dating back to the original PlayStation, cloud streaming, and timed trials among other features.
