Nearly Five Years After Release, Sony Says PlayStation 5 Finally Has More Monthly Active Users Than PlayStation 4, Also Gives Update On PlayStation 6
Over four years after PlayStation 5 released in November 2020, Sony announced that the system now has more monthly active users than PlayStation 4.
As parts of its Business Segment Presentation & Fireside Chat 2025, Sony shared that between both its PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 systems it has over 124 million monthly active users. A slide depicting the breakdown between the two shows that PlayStation 5 has more than PlayStation 4.
While PlayStation 5 has finally topped PlayStation 4 with monthly active users, Sony noted that PlayStation has a higher life-to-date spend, which it defines as “cumulative spend attributed per active device over the first 5 years of each console lifecyle.” However, it’s unclear if this factors in inflation. If it does not, and you factor in inflation from 2017 to 2025 for PlayStation, it is actually higher at $877.
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In last year’s Business Segment Presentation, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 monthly active users were dead even with both of them at 49 million for a total of 97 million.
So the company has improved its monthly active users by 27.8%.
Sony also claimed that PlayStation 5 is its “most profitable generation to-date” noting that it has grossed $136 billion over its first five years compared to $107 billion for PlayStation over its first seven years. However, this too does not appear to factor in inflation.
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In the webcast on the presentation, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Hideaki Nishino commented on PlayStation 5 players saying they “are highly engaged, spending more on the content and services than prior generations.”
Nevertheless, he also added, “The PlayStation 4 remains an important access point for existing players to experience our content and services and we remain committed to serving them.”
During the company’s Fireside Chat, Nishino was asked if a new console was needed and if Sony was developing one given the rise in Cloud gaming.
He responded, “We have been in Cloud gaming for over the last 11 years. We deployed Cloud gaming service that supports the PS3, PS4, and PS5 generations. And we are really proud of the quality we have been delivering. Cloud streaming through the PlayStation+ Premium and via the Cloud streaming beta through the PlayStation Portal is one such way we are doing this. However, the business model for Cloud gaming must be sustainable for the longer term growth. Cloud gaming is progressing well from a technical standpoint as we have demonstrated with these offerings. But end-to-end network stability is not in our control. And the higher cost of our play time compared to the traditional console model remains one of the challenges. Cloud gaming is increasingly providing an additional option for players to access content, but our belief is that the majority of players continue to want to play and experience gaming through local execution without dependency on network conditions. And PS5 and PS5 Pro have validated these thesis, I believe.”
“Our console business has evolved into a multifaceted platform and we now have a large ecosystem of highly engaged players across both PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 generations. So naturally, therefore, there’s a huge interest in our next generation console strategy. While we cannot share further details at this stage, the future of the platform is top of mind. We are committed to exploring a new and enhanced way for players to engage with our content and services,” he concluded.
What do you make of PlayStation 5 finally surpassing PlayStation 4’s monthly active users five years after the release of PlayStation 5?
This sounds like playing with statistics. Does monthly active users mean PS+ subscribers who logged in? The PS5 is a massive failure of a system and I'm glad I never got one.