It’s not unusual for consoles to remain active for a while even after their successors have released, though the cross-gen transitional period has never been long as the one we’re in, which continues on even now, close to four years into the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S’ lives. And though we’re finally seeing fewer and fewer cross-gen releases for major titles (with some notable exceptions), it looks like a large part of the player base itself continues to stick to older hardware.
That’s as per numbers revealed by Sony itself. In a recent presentation shared by PlayStation’s new co-CEOs Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst, it was revealed that 50 percent of PlayStation’s monthly active userbase is still on last-gen hardware. The company says it counts 97 million monthly active consoles, which are split evenly between PS5 and PS4, each having a monthly active userbase of about 49 million users.
“The PlayStation 5 userbase has continued to grow significantly, driving to half of our monthly active consoles,” said Nishino (transcription via VGC). “While the PlayStation 4 is still an important part of our business, our PlayStation 5 players are even more engaged than in our previous generation, and we expect these trends to continue.”
Given the numbers that PS4 continues to pull for Sony even now, at what’s roughly the halfway point in its successor’s life, it’s no surprise that the company still considers the console a pivotal part of its business- though of course, the question is how long the PS4 will be able to maintain that kind of engagement.
If reports are to be believed, Sony intends to release PS5 Pro later this year, and as mentioned, the numbers of games that are getting cross-gen releases is (finally) dwindling- so that split is bound to grow increasingly in PS5’s favour as we go forward.
PS5 has sold over 59.3 million units worldwide as of March 31. Sony says it’s already its most profitable console generation to date.