Update: A previous version of this article stated that Sony has sold 78 million PS4 units, which is incorrect. The company plans to ship 18 million units in fiscal year 2017, bringing the total up to an estimated 78 million units shipped by the end of this fiscal year on March 31, 2018. The updated article is below. Thanks, #875573.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-10-05/sony-sells-78-million-ps4-consoles-worldwide/.122248

Not sure if it’s true or not but I just stumbled upon this and didn’t see a thread on it. I’m sure it’s probably just a typo but there are links within the article that are in Japanese that seem to be announcing the milestone. 

Damn, could possibly end up somewhere between Wii and PS2 before the PS5 arrives and will probably come pretty close to the PS2 LTD. If true, that is.

This has nothing to do with a rumour.
This is the number of PS4s that will have been manufactured by the end of this fiscal (March 31st 2018) year as per Sony's fiscal year forecast.
Apparently your source is some twit that stumbled on the forecast and thought it interesting to make a news report out of it. Whatever.

Ptobably a typo. The forecast is 78M by March 2018.

Can't be a typo ... (that's the forecast for the end of this fiscal year)

Even if their off by the first digit and only talking about shipped numbers it's unprecedented for any console to have ever shipped 6M+ units in Q3 ...

I had to do a double take. There's no way they hit those forecast goals this early. So, likely fake news for now.

This is *literally* impossible. The PS4 sold 63.3 as of June 30th, meaning it sold 10 million in 7 months.

Selling 14.7 million in 3 months(July 1st - August 1st, August 1st to September 1st, September 1st to October 3rd)?

That's 4.9 million sales per month. Sony's last shipment was 3.3 million in a quarter, and the "best selling" Playstation period goes to the 2016 holiday season for PS4, in which sony shipped 9 million(I believe?) and sold 6.2 million of those during the holidays. ( https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/2/14485372/sony-ps4-sales-q3-2016 )

If Sony's best selling Playstation quarter was 9 million shipped in *3 months* during a HOLIDAY, why would you expect a console to *SELL* 14.7 million in 3 months. You're literally expecting it to out a holiday season in 2 months not in shipments, but in sales.

Just ridiculous .... no way this could be true

Edit : Isn't 78 mil the forecast for shipments at the end of the fiscal year? So March 2018? Am I missing something?

Definitely not true, if they shipped almost 15 million PS4's in only a few months from June then we'd be swimming in them. From NPD and Media Create we know that they certainly didn't end up in the US or Japan so definitely some kind of misunderstanding here. Unless some guy in Europe decided to buy like 13 million PS4's or something, (and Sony was actually able to make that amount in such a short time) this is not a legit article.

This site most likely read the Andrew House press release wrong. They mentioned that "PlayStation 4...... is set to reach cumulative sale of 78 million units this fisical year". Someone not in the know, and not reading the statment fully could get confused. Fisical Years end at different times for different companys as well, and I would guess most people don't know Sony's FY ends March 31st.

We will get solid shipped numbers on October 31st when Sony reports their FY2017 Q2 results.