Last month sales of the PlayStaion 4 surpassed 30 million units. That number was reported on November 22, before Black Friday. In terms of its early performance, the PlayStation 4, which came out in 2013, has outpaced the the previous record holder, the PlaySation 2.
In an interview with Financial Review, PlayStation exec Andrew House said, “We are now trying to benchmark against the success of the PlayStation 2–or exceed it if possible.”
In the interview, House also said that Sony had a very successful Black Friday, but didn’t disclose any sales numbers.
The PlayStation 2 is one of history’s most successful consoles, selling over 100 million units in five years. The speed of technological advancement could prevent the PlayStation 4 from beating the PS2’s goal, however.
House says that, “the cadence at which people expect innovation” has become greater and greater. While it’s unlikely that we’ll see console production achieve the same product cycle as phones for example, it’s true that developers’ ambitions and gamers’ expectations will force the technology to continue evolving.
That could be a good thing for Sony.
“Rumors of the demise of the console have been greatly exaggerated,” House said.
At PlayStation Experience last week, Sony had a strong showing of upcoming PS4 games, among them several VR titles. Twitter virtually caught fire when 100ft Robot Golf was revealed. Ubisoft will also be debuting a VR game called Eagle Flight, and racing game Trackmania Turbo is coming to PlayStation VR, as well as Oculus Rift.
PlayStation VR will be coming out in early 2016, with analyst firm IHS predicting that it will sell 2.5 million units in that year.
