ROW and Americas growth is enough to offset the lack of japanese sales

The constraint here is pricing. PS2 was bargain bin price, low enough to people buy it without second thoughts which granted it anormally long end life

We are talking about Switch 1 level of pricing here, 250~300 USD enough to be considered a low cost gaming machine

And this of course considering no PS6 until 2030



Unless Sony is willing to suffer severe losses like during PS2 era I don't see this happening

Hmm probably not, but I could see it getting close with enough time.

You said it better than I, this is exactly what I wanted to communicate in the OP. The pricing is the issue. Also, people were buying PS2's just for separate rooms or to have a good quality DVD player for cheaper than a normal one. The PS2 was an anomaly of circumstances that combined. I can't see PS5 eclipsing 140m even if it's a ten year cycle with no price increases and the economies of the world suddenly healed nor any of this trade deals shenanigans. 130m is a fairly safe number, I would reckon for an extended cycle, that's where the limit feels like it would be reached. I do believe Sony have 120m users and there could be some Xbox and PC refugees or potential PC gamers buying PS5 for the value. Amongst other small things like GTA6 releasing and pushing people into the poor house but increasing hardware sales while doing it but I don't think that all these combined would be of too much note. 

Regardless of what happens, the PS5's sales are impressive at the moment. It's gonna do at least as well as the PS4 even if PS6 releases on time. 

The only probable situation where PS5 hits 161 million or more is if PS6 comes out in 2030 and is like PS3 in terms of reception the first few years. If PS5 is hundreds of dollars cheaper than PS6 and Sony makes enough of them, the market will probably choose PS5.
I don't see that double combination as likely. 125-130 million seems the ceiling for PS5.

I dont think so tbh. I dont have any arguments for this, i just dont think so.

Sony stockpiled enough ram chip's early on, to last almost the entire year of 2026.... without having to buy any at higher prices.

However, I don't see how they magically make it cheaper.
They have already done a few minor revisions making it cheaper to produce.

I would not expect a PS5 slim, that is massively redesigned and cheaper.
best you can hope for, is that for all of 2026, they don't raise prices of the units further.

I really don't see the PS6 coming out later than 2028 so if there's a delay I could see it getting moved to there from 2027 if 2027 is or was the target so 2028 is looking really likely to me now. Another price increase down the line due to the RAM insanity will put a significant damper on the PS5's sales in the last stretch of its life. 2026 should be fine since I imagine they'll try to go as long as possible without raising the price again with GTA 6 on the way but heading into 2027 sales could decline a lot if it is more expensive by Spring that year than it is now.

Also GTA 6 isn't going to cause any long term boost so I dunno what could prevent the PS5 having a big decline that year assuming it is more expensive then. It'll cause a boost when it comes out despite how old the PS5 is cause the game is that big but the vast majority of people who will play it on the PS5 already have one so even that boost is probably gonna be lower than many people are expecting. RDR2 didn't cause any boost and that came out when the gen 8 consoles were 5 years old compared to at least 6 for GTA 6 and the gen 9 consoles.

Delayed to 2030? Maybe.
But as I don't think it'll happen, no, it won't surpass the PS2.

Nope. Even the PS2 wouldn't have sold 150 million units if not for real bizarre circumstances (PS3 being $600, which would be like almost $1000 today because they wanted to push a DVD successor movie format and PS2 being massively discounted down to $129 then $99 outright). If that was a normal console transition, PS2 likely tops off at about 125-130 million units and is phased out of the market by around late 2008, early 2009.