Sony says PS5 is its “most profitable generation yet,” even though half of active gamers are still on PS4

Sony Interactive Entertainment has just shared some interesting data about the current development of its consoles, and the data makes for very interesting reading. The PS5 is regarded by the platform holder as its “most profitable generation to date”, but the PS4 still plays a significant role in its overall business.

Yes, while we learned last month that overall PlayStation hardware sales fell short of Sony’s ambitious targets in the last fiscal year – which is largely in line with current trends across the industry – that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something to brag about during the company’s presentation.

In a presentation at a business unit meeting, Sony said the “PS5 generation” generated $106 billion in sales over four years, almost surpassing the $107 billion in total sales of the PS4 generation from 2013 to 2019. However, it is worth noting that as of April this year, both the PS5 and PS4 had 49 million active users, and the two total users each accounted for about half of the publisher’s overall console user base.

“As you can see, the PlayStation 5 installed base continues to grow significantly, accounting for half of our monthly active consoles,” said Hideaki Nishino, one of two people set to take over some of the responsibilities of retiring CEO Jim Ryan in a few days, during the call (thanks, VGC). “While PlayStation 4 remains an important part of our business, our PlayStation 5 players are more engaged than the previous generation console, and we expect this trend to continue.”

Meanwhile, Sony also noted that as of April 30, 2.4 billion hours of gameplay were played on the PS5, compared to 1.4 billion hours on the PS4. As you might expect, PS5 owners are also spending more on add-ons for games, services, and peripherals.

Meanwhile, while Sony is now porting many of its games to PC and consoles, its plan is to continue to release its “major” single-player games — such as God of War: Ragnarok and Ghost of Tsushima — on consoles first to encourage people to play the series on PlayStation. However, the live streaming service will continue to be launched on PC and consoles because that makes the most commercial sense.

If you want to stay up to date on the big announcements from the PlayStation State of Play conference, which will take place later on May 30, be sure to stay tuned to iGamesNews.