Sales of Sony's Playstation 4 surge in Q1

In the first quarter, sales of Sony's Playstation 4 surged to 1.5 million. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joins The First Trade to discuss.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Sony continues to see big sales of its PlayStation 4 console during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company revealed that it sold 1 and 1/2 million consoles last quarter, bringing the lifetime sales-- wow-- to 110.4 million.

To help break it all down is our tech editor and resident video-game guru Dan Howley. Dan, these are some big numbers, man. I thought consoling was done.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. No, this is still the go-to console for this generation, and it has been for sometime. There was really no catching up for Microsoft with its Xbox One. Nintendo came out of the gate later with the Switch, though that is selling incredibly well, if you can find those right now. They're sold out around the world, really.

But the PlayStation 4 has been the console of this generation simply because it was priced right. It had a lot of great offerings right out of the gate, and they made sure that when they launched, there wasn't a lot of controversy around it. When an Xbox One X, rather, launched, there was a lot to do about whether or not you would be able to play your old games, whether or not you would be able to play used games, something that obviously GameStop had a big issue with.

But the series one or the Xbox One has done relatively well. They've garnered their own set of fans and continue to, but the PlayStation 4 obviously the big winner. Not the best-selling console by Sony. That still goes to the PlayStation 2.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, so Dan, the PS4 sales are good, but they are slowing down a little bit I know. What can you tell us about PlayStation 5? I mean, is it going to be out for the holiday shopping season, and do you think there's going to be some pent-up demand there?

DAN HOWLEY: Oh yeah. So the PS4 is basically-- these are people that may have stragglers, didn't want to get the console when it originally launched, looking for a cheaper price. Maybe during the pandemic and lockdowns, they just want something to pass the time. That's really the kind of sales you're seeing right now, not really the core gamers that Sony really wants to kind of jump on.

The PS5 will launch in holiday season this year. Sony confirmed that on their earnings call. They basically said, look, there's a ton of issues that we have to deal with, whether that's people being locked down and not being able to get to the office to deal with this, manufacturing, but they did say it will launch.

We don't know if it's going to launch in full supply, limited quantity. We don't know the price. That's the big sticking point. Microsoft already has their Series X. We've seen it in person. They have released tons of detail. They recently showed gameplay data on it. So it's really kind of up to Sony to give us a little bit more here.

And, you know, when the original PS3 launched, which was their worst-selling console, it cost $499 for a 20-gigabyte version and $599 for a 60-gigabyte version. That's why it didn't sell well because of that original starting price, and they just lost people from there. That's where Microsoft really took off in gaming with the Xbox 360, and we can expect them to try to do that again this time with the Series X, and so far they really are leading the way as far as letting us know what they're going to be doing and what kind of exclusives they'll offer. And not to mention they have the more powerful console already.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there. Dan Howley, get out and go play some video games.

DAN HOWLEY: You got it. You don't need to tell me twice.