After the PS5 generation got off to a strong start in late 2020, sales of first-party games have declined dramatically every year since then, new data has shown. This follows a period where the PS4 generation saw a regular influx of new first-party releases on that platform, but Sony’s own numbers paint a worrying picture.
According to Stephen Totilo at Game File and Sony’s own data, first-party PlayStation sales peaked in the 2020 financial year–April 2020 to March 2021–with 58.4 million sales. In the following years, those sales began to decline and sank to just 28.9 million units sold in the 2024 financial year, while the 2025 financial year saw the numbers rise to 32.1 million sales for that period. So what’s going on here exactly?
It’s worth noting that PS4 games like The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima are included in the 2020 FY figures, as they launched at the tail end of the PS4 era and are backward compatible with PS5. The PS4 also received a few more games, and at a time when COVID lockdowns saw an explosive growth in gaming, consoles like the PS5 were a hot commodity. Since then, there have been big changes at Sony, some good and some bad.
Sony’s live-service plans, spearheaded by former executive Jim Ryan, haven’t exactly panned out as intended, resulting in costly cancellations, studios being shut down, and the plug being pulled on the online-shooter Concord just two weeks after launch. The plan was to launch 12 live-service games by 2025, but in 2026, it had only a handful of these. Helldivers 2 by Arrowhead is one of its biggest, but Sony is only responsible for publishing the game, and the studio is looking to self-publish its next project.
Vehicular combat game Destruction AllStars has been delisted, content updates for Destiny 2 will end this month, and the response to the upcoming Horizon: Hunters Gathering has been tepid at best. That’s not to say that there haven’t been great PS5 exclusives released–just look at Astro Bot and Ghost of Yotei–but long development times and soaring costs have impacted the frequency at which these games are released.
Today’s State of Play livestream could be the best indicator yet of what PS5 owners can expect in the near future. It does feel like Sony is attempting to recapture its momentum with a renewed focus on single-player games. Upcoming projects like Marvel’s Wolverine and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet point to this potential U-turn. Sony is reportedly keeping its single-player games as PS5 exclusives after several years of bringing them to PC, and other live-service projects like FairGame$ appear to have taken a backseat.
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