Putting the PS4’s 100 million sales in context

  • Fig. 1: The PS4 is the fastest home console to reach the 100 million sales milestone, though the Nintendo DS was a bit faster.
  • Fig. 2: The PS4’s sales pace is dwarfed by that of more general consumer electronics, but not by as much as you might think.
  • Fig. 3: Comparing console sales to games sold across multiple platforms is inherently unfair. At the same time, only the very best-selling games of all time even compete with the PS4’s sales pace and level these days.
  • Fig. 5: A paid subscription is a bigger lift in many ways than a one-time hardware sale. Still, only a few streaming services can match the overall reach of the PS4.
  • Fig. 5: Some games hit 100 million users and slowly fizzle out. Others take a while to get there but prove they can stand the test of time.

Here at Ars, we haven’t been putting a lot of regular time and effort lately into updating Ars readers on the continuing sales battle between Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One. It has been abundantly clear for a while now that Sony’s system is heavily outpacing Microsoft’s in worldwide sales. In fact, the PS4 is also still outselling the Nintendo Switch on an annual basis despite being many years older.

But with Sony announcing last night that the PS4 had passed the 100 million sales mark in under six years, we thought it was worth putting that nine-figure milestone into some context. Here are some comparisons to help your mind grasp how significant this sales level (and pace) really is.

  • 67 months: Time for the PlayStation 4 to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 69 months: Time for the PlayStation 2 to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 79 months: Time for the Wii to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 113 months: Time for the original PlayStation to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 51 months: Time for the Nintendo DS to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 134 months: Time for the Game Boy (and Game Boy Color) to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 31 months: Time for the iPad to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 44 months: Time for the iPhone to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
  • 50 months: Time for Amazon to sell 100 million Alexa-enabled devices worldwide. (Source)
  • 61 months: Time for Grand Theft Auto V to sell 100 million copies worldwide. (Source)
  • 85 months: Time for Minecraft to sell 100 million copies worldwide. (Source)
  • ~90 months: Time for mobile phone versions of Tetris to sell 100 million mobile phone copies worldwide. (Source)
  • 123 months: Time for Netflix to obtain 100 million paid streaming subscribers. (Source)
  • 127 months: Time for Spotify to obtain 100 million paid subscribers. (Source)
  • 158 months: Time for Amazon Prime to obtain 100 million paid subscribers. (Source)
  • 36.2 million: Number of paid PlayStation Plus subscribers as of June 30, 2019.
  • 1 month: Time for Pokemon Go to reach 100 million monthly active users. (Source)
  • 1.5 months: Time for Cityville to reach 100 million monthly active users. (Source)
  • 15 months: Time for PUBG Mobile to reach 100 million monthly active users. (Source)
  • 107 months: Time for League of Legends to reach 100 million monthly active users. (Source)
  • 155 months: Time for Roblox to reach 100 million monthly active users. (Source)
  • 94 million: Monthly active users for PSN as of May, 2019. (Source)

Listing image by Mark Walton

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1543357