It was the best of consoles, it was the worst of consoles. Sony’sPlayStation 5is one of the most interesting consoles to ever exist. It’s got afantastic controller, but barely anyone has really taken advantage of its strength. It’s incredibly powerful and capable of running the most mind-numbingly beautiful games. So why hasn’t it outsold the PlayStation 4 in its nearly four years of existence?
Around this point in the PS4’s lifespan, it had already sold 100 million units. As of June 26, 2025, the PS5 has only sold 59 million units. The issue of Sony’s latest PlayStation not particularly flying off the shelves has been blamed on a few things, whether it be the nearly never ending shortages or the lack of a killer app. However, the sum of these smaller issues really adds up to one larger point: there has never been a good time to buy a PS5.
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The PlayStation 5 on release day
Shortage of compelling launch titles
The PlayStation 5 was released in North America on July 06, 2025. This launch saw two versions of the PS5 hit store shelves: the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation Digital. The two models only differed in $100 price difference and the digital edition lacked a disc drive. The PS5 itself looked impressive, but issues began at square one: what is there to play on it?
The launch titles the PS5 had to work with were underwhelming, to say the least. That’s not to insult the impressive Demon’s Souls remake or Spider-Man: Miles Morales, or even Astro’s Playroom. But, none of those titles felt like the game that could sell the PlayStation 5. Even if you were eager to follow up on Miles' story from the end of the first Spider-Man game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales was released on the PS4.
The biggest issue was actually getting your hands on a PS5.
Of course, games weren’t really the biggest issue. Many people would have been over the moon to play Demon’s Souls or the PS5 version of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The biggest issue was actually getting your hands on a PS5.
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The chip-sized elephant in the room
Where in the world is a PlayStation 5?
In 2020, many things in many marketplaces went wrong, most of which could be tied back to the outbreak of COVID-19. One of these many issues was the chip shortage for computers. While it isn’t entirely to blame on COVID-19, it’s absolutely one of the largest factors in the shortage, which in turn created an entire industry of shortages. From graphics cards to iPhones, this chip shortage could be felt everywhere. The respective launches of Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S were no exceptions.
Your options were either camping out at a store or on a website, paying a scalper hundreds of dollars above retail price, or getting extremely lucky.
Getting your hands on a PlayStation 5 in the months and years after launch was no easy feat. Your options were either camping out at a store or on a website, paying a scalper hundreds of dollars above retail price, or getting extremely lucky. It’s not exactly unusual for consoles to be in high demand at launch, and 2020 was a big year for console sales. Earlier in the year, the Nintendo Switch faced shortages following a wave of sales. But the PS5 shortages weren’t a brief issue. Even two years after the release of the PS5, you could still have trouble finding one in stores or online.
It wasn’t until well into 2023 that the shortages were truly resolved, and the PS5 was no longer a rarity. Today, you can check online or even go to a physical retailer and have no issues finding a PS5. They even have an updated slim model of the console now. Now that you can finally have one, what groundbreaking experiences are waiting for you?
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The missing a-ha moment
Trying to sell ‘it’ without an ‘it factor’
Take a moment and ask yourself a question: How many PlayStation 5 exclusives are there? How many games are there that you can only play on the PlayStation 5? As of this moment, there are 17 of them. Just as the launch titles didn’t exactly pack the “wow” factor that can sell consoles, none of these 17 games have had that must have showing.
As fast and incredible as PS5 games are, none of them have had a moment that really felt like it was only possible on the PS5.
Again, this means no offense to games such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth or Spider-Man 2. Both games are fantastic, but not exactly the kind of experiences that justify the PS5’s existence. As fast and incredible as PS5 games are, none of them have had a moment that really felt like it was only possible on the PS5. Yes, many games load at warp speed. Playing God of War on the PS5 is night and day when compared to the PS4. But, at the end of the day, it’s still God of War.
Outside of PlayStation exclusives, there also aren’t that many ninth-generation exclusives. Just like the PlayStation exclusives, none of the ninth-generation exclusive games have had the kind of oomph that sells consoles. Deathloop is one of my favorite games in the last few years, but it absolutely didn’t give me the kind of “wow” that games like Oblivion did for the Xbox 360. Even Assassin’s Creed Unity, despite all of its flaws, felt like the kind of game that wasn’t possible outside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
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Righting the course
Where can the PlayStation 5 go from here?
There were seven years separating the release of the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5. If that seven-year cycle is to hold up, then we’re over halfway through the lifespan of the PS5. During this point in the PS4’s lifespan, we had exclusives such as Bloodborne and Uncharted 4 alongside high-profile eight-generation exclusives like Fallout 4, Yakuza 0, and The Witcher 3. These sorts of games either don’t exist yet, or have released on both eight and ninth-generation hardware.
With both ninth-generation consoles now widely available, it’s time for developers to start cutting out the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. We also need to see games that really push the boundaries of what the modern generation of consoles are capable of. Perhaps a release like Grand Theft Auto VI could prove to be the killer app that the ninth-console generation needs. But as of right now, there has never been a good time to buy a PlayStation 5 and there just barely seems to be one on the horizon.
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