Sony's game sales had been declining for four consecutive years, but Ghost of Yōtei turned everything around
Journalist Stephen Totilo from Game File noted the sales data for games from Sony's first-party studios as mentioned in the company's financial reports. As it turns out, the situation is not very positive.
Ghost of Yotei
As Totilo noted, 2020* was the last year when the number of copies sold of Sony games exceeded 50 million. To be exact, it reached 58.4 million then. This achievement was fueled by the release of the PlayStation 5 and several successful releases such as The Last of Us Part II, Ghost Of Tsushima, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
However, in 2021, sales plummeted to 43.9 million copies. They continued to fall until 2024 and only started showing growth again in 2025. Still, in the past year, only "just" 32.1 million copies of Sony games were sold — almost half of what was achieved in 2020.
Tolito believes the growth in 2025 owed much to the release of Ghost of Yōtei. Overall, he attributes the four-year sales decline primarily to a slowdown in the release of exclusives. There might be a positive trend this year, as Marvel’s Wolverine is expected to be released in September.
*This refers to fiscal years. For Sony, they span from April 1 of one year to March 31 of the next. For example, the 2025 fiscal year ended on March 31, 2026.