2024 was one of the quietest years for first-party PlayStation games since the PS5 launched. Instead of a God of War Ragnarök or Spider-Man 2, there were excellent but smaller releases like Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures alongside the historic failure of Concord. And yet despite no aces in the hole, Sony won its biggest hand ever. The company reported that last holiday was PlayStation’s best ever and it’s now shipped 75 million PS5s. So where does that leave us in 2025?
Well, Sony’s strategy of convincing its existing player-base to spend more money than it traditionally has is working for one. The platform is more successful than ever and it’s not relying on a steady cadence of first-party exclusives to carry it (Helldivers 2 was huge, but seems to have been much bigger on PC than PS5). Instead, that success is being driven by third-party hits, from single-player blockbusters like Black Myth: Wukong to the latest entries in multiplayer mega-franchises like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
“For all the talk about first-party games, this is a timely reminder that PlayStation remains predominantly a platform business,” wrote the former head of Gamesindustry.biz, Chris Dring. That was the major theme from Sony’s most recent earnings report. Here’s some of what we learned.
Forty-two percent of people who bought PS5s last quarter were new players
While tons of PS4 players still haven’t upgraded yet, a lot of last year’s PS5 sales actually came from first-time buyers. Console growth has generally stalled this generation, but this stat offers hope that things might not end that way as the PS6 launch approaches.
The PS5 is just 1.5 million units behind where the PS4 was at this point
PS5 sales are still lagging behind those of the PS4, but only slightly. The company considers that a big win since the PS5 is more expensive and has never received a price drop. In fact, the price recently went up in Japan, alongside global price hikes on the DualSense controller and PS Plus subscriptions in the last year and a half.
Sony wants to keep broadening its gaming portfolio
We didn’t get a big prestige PlayStation blockbuster in 2024, but the exclusives that did come out hit big in genres Sony hasn’t traditionally been critically acclaimed in. The company signaled it’s looking to build on the success of Astro Bot and Helldivers 2 with more games in the family and multiplayer genres in the future (though its internal live-service plans currently seem to be failing).
PlayStation currently has the highest monthly players ever at 129 million
Monthly player numbers always jump around the holiday as new players get consoles and join PSN for the first time, but the numbers broke a new record at the end of 2024. Sony noted that it was around this time that Helldivers 2‘s big Omens of Tyranny DLC dropped and doubled the game’s active player-base.
Third-party games saved PlayStation last fall
Sony said the primary drivers of PlayStation’s best holiday ever were players spending on skins, battle passes, and subscriptions, as well as third-party blockbusters. That’s surprising given it was a somewhat quieter year overall for big game releases compared to 2023, but PS5 also benefitted from an influx of Xbox multiplatform ports earlier in the year. Sea of Thieves actually ended up being the 20th most downloaded game on the platform in 2024.
But what’s ahead? The company just held its first showcase of the year, but this week’s PlayStation State of Play did little to fill in the blanks for the rest of the calendar when it comes to first-party releases. Sony confirmed in Thursday’s earnings report that Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2 are still on schedule to come out in 2025. There are also reports of an Astro Bot PS5 bundle releasing in March, and the game also just received an update to take advantage of the PS5 Pro.
This week’s State of Play also revealed that Saros, the next shooter from Housemarque, is planned for 2026, and Naughty Dog’s next single-player blockbuster, sci-fi action game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, could be arriving around then as well. We still don’t know what exactly Santa Monica Studio has been up to, other than that it appears to be taking a break from God of War to work on a new IP. And then there’s Insomniac Games with Wolverine waiting somewhere in the wings.
In other words, there are a bunch of heavy hitters on deck but likely scattered out across the last few years of the PlayStation 5’s life. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Some of the PS4’s biggest first-party exclusives also ended up all squeezed together near the end of its life. Days Gone, Death Stranding, The Last of Us Part II, and Ghost of Tsushima all came out within 15 months of each other. And as Sony has proven, that might be frustrating for hardcore fans but it doesn’t matter for the platforms’ overall health.
It makes way more from people buying stuff in Roblox, Fortnite, and NBA2K anyway, and it’s clear that PS5 is where the bulk of them have settled on hanging out this console generation.\
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