Sony has seemingly been facing a decline in the sales of its first-party games. According to a report by Game File’s Stephen Totilo, the company has seen a major decline in recent times, especially when compared to its performance in FY 2020. According to the report, the company has only managed to sell 32.1 million copies of its first-party games in FY 2025, as opposed to 39.7 million in FY 2023, 43.5 million in FY 2022, and 58.4 million in FY 2020.
The trend indicates that sales of first-party PlayStation games have been going down by several million copies year-on-year since 2020, and while there might be a slight uptick in its most recent numbers when compared to the 28.9 million games sold in FY 2024, time will tell if the trend actually manages to reverse itself.
As the report notes, FY 2020 was marked by several major first-party PlayStation releases, including The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. The period was also likely helped by the launch of the PS5 in the same period. In more recent times, however, the company has seen dips in sales despite the critically acclaimed 2024 release of Astro Bot. The uptick seen in the latest report could potentially be attributed to the release of Ghost of Yōtei on PS5 last year.
The data also raises the question of the market generally coming back to an equilibrium. It is worth noting that FY 2020 and the following couple of years were marked by a global pandemic that saw many stuck at home due to lockdowns. This, in turn, resulted in major upticks in game sales, which has also benefited Sony to quite an extent. Half a decade removed from the Covid-19 pandemic, however, the numbers could indicate that the actual ceiling of game sales might be lower than what lockdown-era numbers would indicate.
It is worth noting that the same period also saw Sony attempt to grow its audience by bringing some of its first-party games to PC. However, this has been observed by the company as a less-than-stellar policy, with the delayed PC releases of titles like God of War Ragnarok or Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 not really resulting in a boost in hardware or software sales on consoles. More recent reports have indicated that Sony has decided to stop releasing its single-player games on PC, with Astro Bot, Ghost of Yōtei, and Saros being the first major releases affected by this.
Another important thing to note is the fact that Sony hasn’t really been releasing too many new games in recent times. Development costs and times have only gone up with the increased visual fidelity offered by modern console hardware, which has led to the company only releasing between 2 and 3 new exclusive titles a year. 2026, for example, saw the release of Saros, and later in the year we will see Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and Marvel’s Wolverine.
Along with market conditions, the fact that Sony might just need to focus on releasing more games might also play a major role in the company’s strategy moving forward, especially since it has since moved on from its live-service ambitions, with several projects seeing cancellations in the last couple of years following the disastrous release of Concord.
