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What did Sony mean by “later stage”?
In February 2024, Sony executive Naomi Matsuoka said the PS5 was entering the latter stage of its life cycle and expected annual console sales to slow from the next fiscal year. The statement was about a maturing hardware platform and its sales trajectory. It was not an announcement of an immediate end to PS5 production or support.
At the time, a contemporaneous Tech Times report connected the outlook to Sony reducing its FY2023 PS5 shipment target from 25 million to 21 million. Those figures were shipment targets, not cumulative sales to players. The report also said 8.2 million PS5 units were sold in the 2023 holiday quarter.
How large and active was the PS5 base?
Sony’s May 2024 business-segment presentation gives a different view of the platform’s scale. It reported 56 million cumulative PS5 sell-through units for FY2023 and estimated 49 million monthly active PS5 consoles as of April 30, 2024. The presentation also showed 2.4 billion PS5 gameplay hours for the period it covered.
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These measures describe different things: shipments track units sent into the market, sell-through counts units sold through to customers, and monthly active consoles estimate use during a period. They should not be read as interchangeable sales totals. Together, the official figures show that the PS5 remained a substantial, actively used platform even as Sony anticipated slower hardware growth.
What is Sony’s strategy now?
In its FY2025 Q3 speech transcript, published in February 2026, Sony said PS5 hardware unit sales had “decreased moderately in the latter half of the console cycle,” while PlayStation Store software revenue reached a quarterly record. Sony attributed that software result primarily to major third-party franchise titles and new hit releases.
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The company also said it would prioritize monetizing the installed base and seek further growth in software and network-services revenue. In practical terms, this means the business is not measured only by how many new consoles it sells. Spending on games and services by people who already own a PS5 is an increasingly important part of the picture. Sony’s remarks describe hardware and software/services as complementary parts of its approach, not mutually exclusive strategies.
Sony reported 132 million monthly active accounts across PlayStation in December, up 2% year over year. That is a PlayStation-wide account measure, not a count of PS5 owners or active PS5 consoles.
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Does this mean the PS5 is about to be discontinued?
No such conclusion is established by the cited statements. Sony’s 2024 comment forecast slower sales as the console matured, and its 2026 update described moderate hardware declines while emphasizing revenue from software and services. Neither statement gives a PS5 discontinuation date or a date for a successor console.
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