PlayStation 5 pre-orders may have been snapped up about as quickly as the RTX 30 series were, but the chief analyst of Rakuten Securities Economic Research Institute expects the console to eclipse all previous sales figures for games consoles. According to Noo Imanaka, as reported by SB Creative, the PlayStation 5 will sell ‘two to three hundred million units in five or six years’- in other words, in its lifetime. For comparison, the PlayStation 4 has sold approximately 112 million units to date, which is around 10 million more than the original PlayStation and 25 million more than the PlayStation 3.

Currently, the PlayStation 2 holds the crown for the best-selling games console, with between 155 and 157 million units sold in its lifespan. By contrast, Microsoft has only sold about 50 million Xbox One consoles, 24 million original Xbox consoles, and over 84 million units of the Xbox 360.

Apparently, PlayStation 5 exclusives will drive console sales, with Microsoft opting not to release Xbox Series exclusives at launch. Imanaka does not state which exclusives will drive sales but claims that Xbox Series games are considered inferior to PlayStation 5 exclusive. Imanaka also expects the PlayStation 5 to dominate the eSports industry too, which would undoubtedly boost sales. Rather hyperbolically, Imanaka claims that the PlayStation 5 is headed in a ‘totally different dimension’ to other game consoles, adding that it could be ‘a terminator of the game industry, ending the long-running console war’.