Sony’s PS5 sales plummet amid price rises and a memory crisis

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FollowSee All TechSony’s PS5 sales plummet amid price rises and a memory crisisPS5 sales dropped by 46 percent year-over-year. PS5 sales dropped by 46 percent year-over-year. by Tom Warren Tom WarrenSenior CorrespondentPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

FollowSee All by Tom WarrenMay 8, 2026, 9:15 AM UTC Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Tom Warren Tom WarrenPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Tom Warren is a senior correspondent and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. 5 million PS5 consoles in its most recent fourth fiscal quarter, down 46 percent year-over-year.

The slump in PS5 sales comes after Sony raised the price of its PS5 consoles twice over the past year, pushing the price of the regular PS5 from $499. 99 all the way up to $649. Sony blamed “continued pressures in the global economic landscape,” for the price hikes in March, amid an ongoing memory crisis and pressure from the war in Iran.

Sony now forecasts that annual gaming revenue will drop six percent, but these forecasts could be impacted by ongoing memory costs. “We plan to base our PS5 hardware sales in FY26 on the volume of memory we can procure at reasonable prices and we expect hardware profitability to be essentially the same as FY25,” says Sony. Sony previously revealed in February that it had secured “the minimum quantity necessary” of memory to manage the year-end shopping season, and that it was working “with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers.

Industry Implications

” Across the whole 2025 financial year Sony sold 16 million PS5 consoles, down from 18. 5 million in the prior financial year. It’s a tough market for hardware in general right now.

Microsoft recently revealed its Xbox hardware revenues plummeted 33 percent year-over-year. Along with declining Xbox hardware revenue, Microsoft also reported a 5 percent drop in Xbox content and services. Nintendo is also raising its Switch 2 prices by $50 on September 1st, and forecasting a drop in sales over the next year.

Sony also revealed that during the last financial year it has recorded a $765 million impairment cost against Bungie, the struggling studio behind Destiny 2 and Marathon. Sony first announced its was acquiring Bungie in a $3. 6 billion deal just days after Microsoft’s announcement that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2022.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.