PS5 Ships 13.4 Million Units as of September 30, PS4 Ships 116.6 Million

[DonFerrari]

curl-6 said:

PS4 vs Gameboy is coming right down to the wire. Will be very close either way.

Rafie said:

The pandemic pretty much killed it. After stock went out, no more PS4s were getting manufactured. Of course priority shifted to the new consoles. Hence the stalled hardware. Shame really. I thought for sure it would have gotten to at least 125m.

I wouldn't say the pandemic killed it. It over 6 years old already when covid started in earnest, so it was already slowing down; as others have already said, once it was replaced Sony would rather people buy a PS5 than a PS4 so they opted not to take extraordinary measure to prolong the latter's life and just let it ride out what momentum it had left.

I would say that if they had done a pricecut the pandemic would have boosted the sales of PS4 even on the verge of death.

So yes the decision to let PS4 and X1 die was from their manufacturers, not fault of pandemic. The shortages of PS5 and Series can be partially faulted to pandemic thought.