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Sony Confirms More Studio Acquisitions | PS4 Is the 2nd Best Selling Console of All Time

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Sony just quietly locked up the second-best-selling console in history, and it’s not slowing down on studio shopping.

Sony’s Q2 FY2019 earnings report, released in late October, confirmed what PlayStation fans had been tracking for months: the PS4 has shipped 102.8 million units worldwide, officially passing the original PlayStation and the Nintendo Wii to become the second-best-selling home console ever made. Only the PlayStation 2, with its staggering 155 million units, sits ahead of it. Buried in the same call were two other moves that say a lot about where Sony is putting its money heading into the PS5 generation.

• The PS4 shipped 2.8 million units in the quarter ending September 30, 2019, pushing its lifetime total to 102.8 million — ahead of the original PlayStation’s 102.49 million and the Wii’s 101.63 million, and second only to the PS2’s 155 million.
• Sony confirmed it will keep acquiring outside development studios following its August 2019 purchase of Insomniac Games, which came right after Marvel’s Spider-Man became a critical and commercial hit.
• Sony announced on October 29, 2019 that PlayStation Vue, its live TV streaming service, will shut down on January 30, 2020, as the company redirects resources toward gaming and network services like PlayStation Plus, which had 36.9 million subscribers, and PlayStation Now.

The Numbers Behind the Milestone

Hardware sales this deep into a console’s life cycle usually slow to a crawl, but the PS4 is still moving 2.8 million units a quarter six years after launch. That’s the kind of tail Sony was chasing when it built out one of the strongest exclusive lineups in console history, and it’s a big reason the PS4 leapfrogged both the original PlayStation and the Wii in the same reporting period rather than trickling past them one at a time.

Only the PS2 remains out of reach, and at 155 million units sold over its own decade-plus run, it’s a target Sony isn’t likely to touch with the PS4 alone. Still, cracking the number two spot outright — ahead of two consoles that defined their own generations — is the kind of headline figure Sony can point to as it starts talking up the PS5.

Sony Continues Acquiring Gaming Studios

Sony’s studio-shopping isn’t new, but the pace is picking up. The Insomniac Games deal in August 2019 came directly on the heels of Marvel’s Spider-Man’s success, and Sony used the earnings call to make clear that more acquisitions are coming as it builds out PlayStation Worldwide Studios ahead of next-gen. Sony isn’t naming targets publicly, but that hasn’t stopped the guessing game.

Commentators like YouTuber MBG have spent months floating the same handful of names as logical next moves: Bluepoint Games, Housemarque, Remedy Entertainment, and Kojima Productions — all studios with long-running relationships with PlayStation already. None of those deals were confirmed as of this report, but the pattern from Insomniac is obvious: Sony likes to buy studios it’s already worked with successfully, not gamble on unknown partners.

102.8 million PS4s shipped — enough to pass the original PlayStation and the Wii, with only the 155-million-unit PS2 still standing between Sony and the top of the all-time chart.

PlayStation Vue’s Shutdown

The same earnings window brought a much quieter announcement: PlayStation Vue, Sony’s live TV streaming service, is closing for good on January 30, 2020. Sony pointed to brutal competition and expensive content licensing in the pay-TV space as the reason for pulling out, choosing instead to put that money back into gaming and network services.

That means more resources for PlayStation Plus, which had already climbed to 36.9 million subscribers, and PlayStation Now. It’s a clear signal of where Sony sees its future revenue coming from — not TV bundles, but the subscription and network side of gaming itself, the same infrastructure question that’s shadowed other platform holders’ streaming bets, from PlayStation’s own PS Now to Google’s Stadia.

Setting Up the PS5 Era

None of this happens in a vacuum. Sony is stacking hardware bragging rights, first-party studio depth, and subscriber numbers all at once, right as it starts teasing the PS5. The rumor mill around the PS5 was already running hot in late 2019, and a bigger stable of first-party studios gives Sony more ammunition for exclusives once that console actually ships.

Whichever studio Sony announces next — Bluepoint, Housemarque, Remedy, or Kojima Productions — it’ll be the fourteenth-plus name added to a PlayStation Worldwide Studios roster that’s already stacked, and it’ll be scrutinized against one very high bar: whatever Insomniac does with its Spider-Man follow-up.