Hardware sales may be down across the board in the video game industry, but that hasn’t stopped Sony from reaching a major new PlayStation 5 sales milestone this year. The multimedia giant achieved its latest impressive sales feat prior to the holiday rush and before the highly-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto 6 to boot.
Sony just revealed that the PS5 has reached 100 million units in sales as of Nov. 10, 2026. For contrast, Sony sold 84.2 million PS5 consoles around this time last year, in 2025. The PS5 still hasn’t reached the PlayStation 4’s lifetime sales of 117 million units, which places the older hardware among the best-selling gaming devices of all time. Still, the PS5 isn’t that far off, given the six-year time frame — and the lack of GTA 6.
GTA 6’s impact on PS5 sales
Though GTA 6 is a multiplatform game, Sony and Rockstar have repeatedly marketed the idea that the open-world game plays best on PS5. The PS5 Pro offers platform-specific features in GTA 6, like ray-traced shadows, which are sure to drive sales of the already scarce console further after the game’s release on Nov. 19. Let’s not forget the GTA 6-themed DualShock controllers, which undoubtedly precede an eventual GTA 6-themed PS5 console or bundle.
If that seems like a lot hinging on a single game, well, there’s a reason for that. Sony is already treating GTA 6 like the biggest “exclusive” the platform has ever seen. GTA 6 holds the distinction of being the most pre-ordered game on the PlayStation Store. We know that Sony has raised its sales forecasts for the near future due to the sales of third-party games, a prediction that many have treated as a tacit nod to GTA 6’s impact. The game will drive sales on Xbox as well, but let’s be real: the PS5 is the main character of the current console generation. Current PS5 exclusives, like Marvel’s Wolverine, aren’t significantly moving the needle for the console.
Perhaps Sony’s biggest hurdle to Sony overtaking the PS4’s dominance is supply. Recent price hikes have made new PS5s unusually expensive during an era of economic turmoil in the United States. The console-maker is concerned enough about the situation that it has started asking users to trade in their PS5s. If a significant portion of sales shift to the resale market, it’ll be interesting to see how Sony counts those transactions against the PS5’s lifetime numbers — or how much they might cut into new units entering living rooms.
