Over 4% of PS5 Owners Have Purchased a PlayStation Portal in the US - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 February 2025 / 18,710 Views
Executive Director & Video Game Industry Analyst at Circana (NPD) Mat Psicatella has revealed over four percent of PlayStation 5 owners have a PlayStation Portal as of the end of 2024.
With an estimated 24.54 million PS5s sold through the end of 2024 in the US, according to VGChartz estimates, that would mean over 980,000 PlayStation Portals have been sold in the US.
The PlayStation Portal also generated the highest dollar sales for accessories in 2024 in the US.
"Ended up being a great holiday period for PlayStation Portal in the US," said Piscatella. "It finished the year with an over 4% attach rate to PS5's lifetime installed base and ranked 1st among accessories in 2024 dollar sales.
"Attach rate finished about a full percentage point higher than I'd expected. Good stuff."
He added, "Remote play still impacts a very small portion of the overall audience, but it's growing and is showing strong potential for the future. So we have that going for us, which is nice."
Ended up being a great holiday period for PlayStation Portal in the US. It finished the year with an over 4% attach rate to PS5's lifetime installed base and ranked 1st among accessories in 2024 dollar sales.
Attach rate finished about a full percentage point higher than I'd expected. Good stuff.
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Remote play still impacts a very small portion of the overall audience, but it's growing and is showing strong potential for the future.
So we have that going for us, which is nice.
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 1:43 PM
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
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I wonder how it has done worldwide. An accessory like this is a very frivolous purchase, in some respects. That would lead to me think that it would do better in the US than in much of the rest of the world.
On the other hand, Americans tend to have more TVs than most of the rest of the world. So that makes it less useful to Americans.
Anyway, I'd be interested to know the worldwide number.
Agreed. It’d be interesting to see WW figures, Hybrid seems to be a very powerful selling point, and the Portal only lends evidence to this. A $200 accessory should not have anywhere near 3mil units sold, yet here we are. I would love to see Sony and Microsoft push a little further into making their systems a bit more portable, and not simply using cloud saves (or wtvr PSPortal is using). One of my favorite parts about NSW is how easy it is to bring it with me if somebody wants to play a quick round of MarioKart (i crushing the students i tutor at mariokart lol), or if I’m switching btwn rooms in my house.
Gaming itself is "frivolous " to be fair. I've definitely seen a purpose for the PS Portal though.
frivolous is a word on my GRE vocab list. The etymology behind the word is interesting, though examining the term’s breakdown: friv- originates from friare (“rub, break away, crumble”; example of a term which utilizes this root would be friction). To be or a crumble, break away, “rub” nature is to be of an manner which lacks fixed structure, i.e. lacking a definite form/manner. Hence, the term is defined as “unnecessary, unserious, silly”.
That all being said…if by “frivolous spending” you mean unessential spending, then you aren’t wrong. In fact, upon reviewing VAMatt’s use of the term, I feel maybe he’d have been better off using another term over “frivilous” as such a term suggests that PSPortal is an unnecessary/unimportant product…which is an odd way to describe a product which has millions of consumers purchasing it. It’s a useful product for those looking to play PS5 on-the-go…i believe VAMatt should just drop the adjective in this context, leaving the “frivolous purchase” unstead as simply a “purchase”. Nothing more.
Probably in the 2-3 million area globally, then?
Yes but 2-3 million out of 70 million cannot be sucessfull! PSVR2 has an install base of 2 million. Sony calles it a flop but PSPortal with basically the same hardwarebase (maybe barly more) despite being far less expensive should be a sucess? Come on! Before you people "attack" with minus again please think logical and answer me without excuses like "to expensive":
Why is PSVR2 with an install base of 2 million considered a flop but PSPortal wich only costs a 3rd of PSVR2 is a "sucess" despite only barly selling more?
Who says 2M can't be successful? It all depends on what you budget for. Based on how fast the Portal sells out, how cheap it probably is to produce, and the fact that it was last year's highest grossing accessory, I'd say Sony is very happy with its success. Nothing at all like the PSVR2.
PSVR needs to be successful because exclusive games and game modes cost money and benefit from its success. Playstation Portal is an optional/expensive accessory more in line with premium controllers. Its sales performance has no bearing on game development. So it's doing great for what it is.
Aside from what Kyuu said about PS portal not needing any kind of dedicated software support, it's profit margins are likely close to $100 per unit. It's a controller and screen being sold for $200.
PSV2 also sold like 25% of it's global units in launch so it's sales have fallen behind Portal whereas portal has been pretty consistent and grown.
4% is a lot for a peripheral like this. 3M sales would be better than the Steam deck manages in a year and that occupies a much greater mindshare and is viewed positively while this product was derided from day one.
Better than the Steam Deck? Come on! The Steam Deck did ~5 million in 2 years. The WiiU and the Vita did more in thr same timeframe
!! And i would not call both systems a sucess! Personally i think 2- 3 million out of 70 million+ is a bit disapointing. Yes maybe PSPortal makes more profit but if Kinect was considered a Flop witch 24 million sales on the 360 alone and a base of 86 million+ 2-3 million with an install base of 70 million+ can hardly be a sucess. Maybe sucessful from profit but not from the number of sales. Thats the way i see it! Otherwise Labo on Switch would be a Smash hit (7- 9 million sold) but its a flop as well! Sometimes i think just when people read my name, they don't read what i write, just downvote. Thats not very wise.
Labo sold 1.39m units it's first year, over all kits. I don't believe there's any official sales numbers beyond that.
The kinect was a massive success for a while, it lead to a late life year on year sales increase for the xbox 360, no idea where you are getting this idea from. Probably one of the most successful peripherals of all time. It just didn't have a long life, and died suddenly, just like the Wii ran out of life quickly. No one considers the Wii a failure because it was basically dead after 5 years.
The PS Portal has been out for 14 months, not 2 years and it was sold out for months. It's selling at a faster rate than the Steam Deck(sold about 2m in first year, no official sales numbers ) despite being a product that's ridiculed and only a peripheral, not full hardware.
Sorry my bad, i overestimated Labo. Yes its a flop (probably one of the few flops the Switch had), but now it sold at leat a little more than 1,39 million.
About Kinect there where so many people calling Kinect a Flop despite the fact it sold on par/ outsold the Wii Balance Board wich was an enormous sucess! Of 24 million (Kinect/ Wii Balance Board) is a flop, whats Portal, Move, PSVR(2) then? You can find the Portal easy now. Many stores i walked in sell it for 199€.
The Kinect was not a failure, it sold monster numbers, but only for a very short period of time. That’s a very different story. You also need to understand that the marketing budget was huge for the device. Here’s a quote:
“ Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg stated that Microsoft's marketing campaign for Kinect would carry a similar scale to a console launch; the company was reported to have budgeted $500 million on advertising for the peripheral, such as television and print ads, campaigns with Burger King and Pepsi, and a launch event in New York City's Times Square on November 3 featuring a performance by Ne-Yo.”
Also, Labo was such a big deal when it got announced the Nintendo stock rose by 2.4% that day, representing $1.4 Billion to their valuation. It almost certainly had a significant advertising budget too.
The Portal was a random peripheral that had no advertising that I’m aware of and was universally scorned.
A product is successful if it turns a profit.
Thus you can sell 80~ million units of something and have it regarded as a "failure".
Or you can sell 1 million units and have it as a "success".
Hence why some games are "successful" if they sell 2 million units, but others are a "failure" if they only sell 10~ million units.
The budgets dictate what the level of sales are to regard it as a successful product.
The Portal being an extension of the PS5 is primarily an accessory and not regarded as a separate platform with exclusive content, thus it's level of success is going to differ from something like the Vita or PSVR.
So you would call the WiiU a "sucess"? Yes it was a profit for Nintendo, but calling it a "success" would be not the right deffinition here. PS3 as a hardware made a loss of ~8 billion dollars. Is this it a "failure", despite selling nearly a billion games. No its not a generation winning plattform but not a failure. It moved over 86 million units. What people are trying here is trying to prevent Portal of being a device selling below expectations. No matter how Sony spins it... i mean did they realy expect less than 2 million units? Then many 3rd party controllers should also be a "sucess", they also sell more than 2 million units and make money.
Do you have any evidence that third party controllers sell millions of units? That seems unlikely.
I do not have evidenve but i highly doubt Namcos NeGCon or JoGCon (bundled with ridge Racer Type 4) undersold 2 million. There are ~30 lightgunshooters on PS1 and Point Blank 1- 3 where bundled with the G-Con 45, as well as Time Crisis and Time Crisis: Project Titan. The NeGCon was not only compatible with all Ridge Racer games but also witch Gran Turismo 1 and 2. The JoGCon was only compatible with RR4 and as a fun fact, the first ever PS2 game Ridge Racer 5 was the only PS2 game that worked with it as well.
So yes, the G- Con 45, the NeGCon and the JoGCon sold ober 2 million units easily. The G-Con 2 on the PS2 was not a flop either as Vampire Night, Time Crisis 2, 3 and Crisis Zone was bundled with it. G- Con 3 for PS3 i am not sure.
But PS1 had a lot more than just Namco controllers. But you can be sure: There would never have been a G- Con 2 for PS2 and a G-Con 3 (damn i just love that UZI style gun- just black would have been better than orange!!) for PS3 if they sold less than 2 million- even less with a base of 100 million+ users.
Didn't Sony undership the Portal for at least a few months and said it exceeded expectations? I don't know about Sony's exact expectations, but upon announcement, I personally thought it was a bad product that wasn't going to hit a single million lifetime. No one seemed excited for it.
And please stop trying to rewrite history. 99% of us considered the first Kinect a huge success. It's just that Kinect 1's success led to a disastrous Xbox One launch that went on to hurt the brand and raise Playstation back to dominance. So the very thing that helped extend X360's life ended up damaging the brand in a strange twist of fate.
You have a bad habit of trying to force me to say something I never said. I never claimed the WiiU was a success.
The WiiU was a financial sink for Nintendo, it was not regarded as a success.
The PS3 eventually became profitable, thus it can be regarded as a success.
I am not sure what part of my original statement you struggled with in regards of what constitutes a success/failure?
PS Portal isn't anywhere near as costly as making the PS VR 2 as well. That's very much an apples to oranges comparison.
Yeah probably closer to 3m...
They only have data for the US, this data is from Circana.
Oh... my bad! I thought this was a Sony declaration lol attention issue on my part
I snagged a 30th anniversary edition and have been loving it so far...
But 4% is much lower than I would have thought... especially given the narrative "They cant make enough" or "They cant even keep these in stock" lol
suggests alot more people actually want one, and they just arn't produceing them fast enough.
( guess sony is being carefull to not make more than they can sell)
I guess didn't go into as much detail as I should have lol
I never understood the narrative because I've never seen them out of stock outside of its initial release. My Walmart and GameStop seem to always have a stack so I figured they must have been selling really well.
4% isn't bad at all... I just thought it was more like 10%
4% is high given the device literally will not work for a huge portion PS5 owners and wasn't marketed to casual consumers or even available at retail til recently. At max a device like this will have 10% ownership.
Sony has ramped up production now so it's always available
I have one. Its been great for my current situation. I am remodeling my upstairs and move everything from others rooms into my game room. so i pretty much cant get in there to play so I turned to the portal. I do the same thing with my series X and using the logitech g cloud for that. I know how people feel about streaming but in my experience it has been great. I guess its mostly due to having a really good mesh network in my home as well as 1gb internet.
I've had extremely good experiences with game streaming myself. Haven't used the Portal, but have used Xbox cloud gaming a lot. No problems whatsoever, even playing shooters.
I think this whining about game streaming is just old dudes acting like teenage girls. People that have serious experience with it seem to have had almost universally positive experiences. It's just that middle-aged gamers that hang out in forums like this one don't like change.
Nah, I tried Remote play at home in a different room and it was unplayable, like updating 3 frames per second. My PS5 is connected via Wifi (router is on a completely different floor) but my internet works decently for regular netflix streaming etc so it must be extra taxing by comparison. Maybe streaming directly from the cloud in this instance would be better? Either way it's certainly not something that works universally
So, is that good?
I bought a Portal about a month ago and I haven't gamed on my PS5 since. The freedom of being able to play anywhere I want is great. I understand that it's not for everyone, but I'm glad the sales are still doing well. I can't wait to see what future updates bring.
What I don't like about Circana is that they measure their ranking in dollar sales which gives us a wrong picture. I mean it's much easier to make high dollar sales with an expensive device than with let's say cheap joypad skins or it's much easier to win the dollar's race with an expensive PS5 (Pro) and Xbox Series X than with a much cheaper Switch.
Pure dollars are a better representation of what people are willing to spend their money on.
Essay Pro