Sony shipped 4.5 million PlayStation 5 units worldwide in 2020, as revealed by information published alongside the company’s latest earnings report. The number highlights Sony’s current ability to mass-produce the console, which has been extremely difficult to buy since its launch in November.
Demand for the PlayStation 4 dropped dramatically year-on-year, with 1.4 million units shipped in the October-December quarter — a 77 percent decrease from the previous year. Sony actually managed to sell fewer PS4s in the holiday quarter than it did from July to September.
Sony’s gaming business overall performed much better than a year ago, with analyst Daniel Ahmad noting that it was actually the best quarter in PlayStation history. Revenue increased 40 percent to 883.2 billion yen ($8.4 billion), partly driven by PS5 sales. Operating profit was up by 50 percent to 80.2 billion yen ($763.3 million) because of higher game sales, PlayStation Plus subscriptions, and better margins on PS4 hardware.
Sony does note, however, that expenses related to the PS5 launch offset some of its profit gains, and also confirms that the PS5 hardware itself is being sold for less than it costs to make. A loss was incurred due to “strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were set lower than the manufacturing costs,” the company says.
There’s not much to read into PS5 sales numbers until people who want to buy one are actually able to do so. But at the very least, the console’s launch seems to be broadly comparable in size to the PS4’s; the PS4 also shipped 4.5 million units in its launch quarter.
Microsoft didn’t release specific sales figures for the Xbox Series X or Series S with its earnings report last week, but the company did say that Xbox hardware revenue was up 86 percent year-on-year.
Nintendo has announced that, as of December 31, 2020, the Nintendo Switch has officially passed the 3DS with 79.87 million console units sold. Furthermore, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has reached 31.18 million copies sold.As revealed in Nintendo’s latest financial earnings release for the nine month period ending December 31, 2020, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting ever closer to passing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s 33.41 million units sold as the best-selling Nintendo Switch game.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the third-best selling Switch game with 22.85 million units sold, followed by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s 21.45 million units, Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield’s 20.35 million units, and Super Mario Odyssey’s 20.23 million units.Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield have also become the first Pokemon games to sell over 20 million units since Pokemon Gold and Silver.
During the nine months ending December 31, 2020, titles released in the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2020, saw a ton of success. Super Mario 3D All-Stars sold 8.32 million units, Paper Mario: The Origami King sold 3.05 million units, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity sold 2.84 million units, Pikmin 3 Deluxe sold 1.94 million units, and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit sold 1.08 million units.
Have you played Nintendo Switch?
Games released in previous fiscal years also continued to sell well in these nine months, led by Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ 19.41 million units. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 8.64 million units, Ring Fit Adventure sold 5.95 million units, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold 4.04 million units, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 4.01 million units.29 Nintendo Switch titles sold over one million copies, including 9 games from other software publishers.
Nintendo Switch hardware sales reached 24.10 million units in this time period, which is a 35.8% increase year-on-year, and software sales reached 176.10 million units, which is a 43.0% increase year-on-year.
It is also interesting to note that the Nintendo Switch Lite has sold 13.53 million units in its lifetime, meaning it is close to passing the Wii U’s 13.56 million units.
Digital sales also accounted for 40.9% of all software sales, which is a 12.3% increase year-on-year. Digital sales also saw an increase of 104.9% when compared to 2019.Mobile and IP related income saw an increase of 13.8% year-on-year.
While we don’t know Nintendo’s full plan for 2021, we do have Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokemon Snap, and Bravely Default 2 to look forward to in the next couple months.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
No, Robinhood tells The Verge, it didn’t sell off full shares of GameStop, AMC, and other buzzy stocks without permission from its traders.
That contradicts the stories of twelve people who spoke with The Verge, saying that the app unexpectedly sold off their holdings in some of these companies. Quite a number of Robinhood users expressed their surprise on social media today that the app was selling off their stakes, and we tracked down a dozen of them. These traders didn’t believe they had prompted the sales, and they said they weren’t aware of anything on their account that would have automatically triggered them.
“I didn’t have any triggers to sell the stock whether it went up or down. I certainly wouldn’t have put it at $197 when it had just been almost $500,” Jett Flores, who said he was holding stock in GameStop and AMC through Robinhood, told The Verge.
A spokesperson for Robinhood said these small sellers are wrong about how their shares were sold. “I can confirm that claims that Robinhood proactively sold customers’ shares outside of our standard margin-related sellouts or options assignment procedures are false,” the spokesperson told The Verge.
On Wednesday, Robinhood warned some investors with options in GameStop and AMC that it may automatically sell off their stakes to reduce risk, the spokesperson said. But these investors told The Verge they didn’t have options in GameStop or AMC and hadn’t purchased the stocks on margin. They had purchased the shares outright, they said, and were planning to hold onto them.
Margin orders occur when an investor borrows money from the broker (in this case Robinhood) to complete a sale, and brokers can call in those shares if they’re worried the investor can’t pay up. According to Robinhood, most of its actions have been calling in options to purchase shares — a more aggressive move, but not unprecedented. But if users fully owned their shares, as these traders claim they did, selling the holdings would be far more unusual.
The Verge saw screenshots from six traders indicating that their purchase of GameStop or AMC stock had been filled within Robinhood. Six traders sent screenshots showing that their stock in these companies had been sold, with four clearly indicating that they had been sold today. Another trader sent screenshots showing a purchase of Naked Brand stock being filled and then sold within the app. The screenshots don’t indicate how the purchases were funded or how the sales were initiated, but in several of them the app displays a message saying, “We’ve received your order to sell [#] shares of [stock] at the best available price.”
Traders who spoke with The Verge said they were disappointed to lose their stake in these companies. The traders had been planning to keep the stock for longer, and several said they certainly wouldn’t have sold it at the point that they believe Robinhood pushed through the transaction, as GameStop’s stock was faltering from a nearly $500 high.
“It’s extremely dishonest trade on their part and unacceptable,” Ian Q., who said Robinhood unexpectedly sold his shares in GameStop this morning, told The Verge.
The surprise selloff isn’t happening to everyone — plenty of people on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit (and one person I know, who told me they purchased GameStop stock days ago) say they weren’t impacted. And though traders may be outraged by the surprise, Robinhood’s terms of service grant it permission to close a trader’s position under a number of circumstances.
While r/WallStreetBets has been at the center of the frenzy around GameStop and AMC stocks, Robinhood has been the tool of choice for many of the small-time and brand new traders jumping in to take part. But this morning, Robinhood blocked new purchases of stock from GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Nokia, and others that were spiking in large part because of purchases coming through the app. The company is now facing widespread backlash from users, celebrities, and politicians, and it’s announced plans to re-open purchases on a “limited” basis on Friday.
It’s still not clear what happened to cause these users’ stakes to be sold off today. But at the very least, it means Robinhood has even more unhappy customers.
Smash hit multiplayer game Among Us got a surprise release on the Nintendo Switch last December following an indie showcase and ever since it’s been at the top of the eShop charts. It’s only £3.89/$5.00 if you haven’t already picked it up.
According to SuperData, the game is estimated to have already sold a whopping 3.2 million copies on the Switch eShop in the same month and was also apparently the highest-earning version:
“Among Us player numbers fell from their November peak, but the game was still 2.8 times as popular as the next most-popular game, Roblox. The title also launched on Nintendo Switch in December. This edition sold 3.2M copies and was the highest-earning version of the game for the month.”
If you’re one of the many people who have already bought the game on Switch, there’s plenty to anticipate – with developer Innersloth currently working on the new Airship map with the plan to release it at some point early this year.
Were you one of the estimated 3.2 million who have purchased Among Us on Switch last month? Tell us in the comments.
One winning ticket was sold in Michigan for the $1 billion Mega Millions jackpot, making it the third-largest lottery prize in U.S. history.
The winning numbers drawn Friday are: 4, 26, 42, 50, 60 and a Mega Ball of 24. The winning ticket was purchased at a Kroger store in Novi, Michigan — a city about 8 miles northwest of Detroit, according to the Michigan Lottery website.
The Mega Millions top prize had been growing since September 15, when a winning ticket was sold in Wisconsin. The lottery’s next estimated jackpot is $20 million.
Friday night’s drawing comes two days after a ticket sold in Maryland matched all six numbers drawn and won a $731.1 million Powerball jackpot.
Only two lottery prizes in the U.S. have been larger than Friday’s jackpot. Three tickets for a $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot were sold in January 2016, and one winning ticket sold for a $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018.
The jackpot figures refer to amounts if a winner opts for an annuity, paid in 30 annual installments. Most winners choose a cash prize, which for the Mega Millions jackpot is $739.6 million.
The odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot are incredibly steep at one in 302.5 million.
The game is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The winning ticket for a $1 billion jackpot, the third-biggest lottery prize in U.S. history, was sold at a Michigan grocery store, according to state lottery officials.
The winning numbers, which were drawn on Friday night, were picked by a customer at a Kroger grocery store in Novi, a city of about 60,000 people that is 30 miles northwest of Detroit.
State lottery officials said the identity of the winner will not be known until the person contacts them. Michigan law requires that winners of games played across states, such as Mega Millions and Powerball, be publicly identified, said Jake Harris, a spokesman for the state lottery.
The winner can choose to collect the prize through an initial payment and then annual payments for 29 years, or receive a one-time cash payment of about $739 million. In that case, the winner would get about $530 million, after taxes, state lottery officials said.
If the winner chose an annual payout, the initial payment would be about $11.3 million after taxes, with payments increasing 5 percent every year. The final payment would be about $46.7 million after taxes, Mr. Harris said.
The odds of winning the jackpot were 1 in 302,575,350, according to Mega Millions. The winning numbers in the Mega Millions lottery were 4, 26, 42, 50 and 60, with a Mega Ball number of 24.
The numbers were picked two days after the numbers were selected for a winning ticket in a $731 million Powerball jackpot, which was sold in Lonaconing, Md., a down-on-its-luck former mining town in the virus-battered northwestern corner of the state. The winning ticket was sold at Coney Market, a convenience store that sells subs and pizza in Lonaconing, a town of about 1,200 in Allegany County, which has the most Covid-19 cases per capita in the state. About a quarter of the population of Lonaconing lives below the poverty line, according to census data.
A spokeswoman for Kroger congratulated the winner in Michigan and the mayor of Novi, Bob Gatt, said the news came a month after the city was named “the second-most innovative city in the country” by Entrepreneur magazine.
He described Novi as a rapidly growing city that had once been a rural outpost of Detroit but was now a hub of car manufacturing that was attracting tech companies like Google.
Mr. Gatt said he was “ecstatic” for the winner. “I’d be better if I had the winning ticket,” he said.
The jackpot was the second-largest prize in the history of Mega Millions.
In 2018, a person who chose to remain anonymous won $1.537 billion in South Carolina. That prize remains the world’s largest lottery prize ever awarded on a single ticket, according to Mega Millions.
The biggest lottery prize ever awarded in the United States was a $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot in 2016, according to The Associated Press. It was divided among three ticket winners in California, Florida and Tennessee.
A lingering mythology holds that the winners of big jackpots become cursed after their strokes of good fortune. There are numerous accounts of winners who, unequipped to manage their newfound wealth, go on to struggle with drugs or alcohol, ruined relationships and insolvency.
While one influential study in 1978 found that lottery winners were not any happier than their neighbors or more optimistic about the future, other studies have countered the notion of the so-called lottery curse.
The studies suggest that the winners’ general psychological well-being bounces back over time.
In 2018, a New Hampshire woman filed a lawsuit to keep her name from being released to the public after she won $560 million in the Powerball lottery.
Lawyers for the woman, who called herself Jane Doe in the lawsuit, said she wished to use a portion of her winnings for charity “far from the glare and misfortune that has often fallen upon other lottery ‘winners.’”
One winning ticket was sold in Michigan for the $bn Mega Millions jackpot, the third-largest lottery prize in US history.
The winning numbers drawn on Friday were 4, 26, 42, 50, 60 and a Mega Ball of 24.
The top prize had been growing since 15 September, when a winning ticket was sold in Wisconsin. The lottery’s next estimated jackpot is $20m.
Friday night’s draw came two days after a ticket sold in Maryland won a $731.1m Powerball jackpot.
Only two lottery prizes in the US have been larger than Friday’s jackpot. Three tickets for a $1.586bn Powerball jackpot were sold in January 2016, and one winning ticket sold for a $1.537bn Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018.
The jackpot figures refer to amounts if a winner opts for an annuity, paid in 30 yearly installments. Most winners choose a cash prize, which for the Mega Millions jackpot is $739.6m.
The odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot are incredibly steep: one in 302.5m.
The game is played in 45 states as well as Washington DC and the US Virgin Islands.
“Thanks for all the interest in Bernie’s mittens!” Jen Ellis wrote on Twitter. “I’m so flattered that Bernie wore them to the inauguration. Sadly, I have no more mittens for sale. There are a lot of great crafters on ETSY who make them.”
A few years ago, Ellis, who teaches second grade, gave the Vermont senator the patterned, hand-knit “smittens” — part mittens, part sweater — on the campaign trail. But she didn’t expect he’d start wearing them at high-profile events like the inauguration. The mittens are made from repurposed wool sweaters and lined with fleece made from recycled plastic bottles, she said in a tweet last year.
The image is also being sold on T-shirts, mugs and as a $25 bobble head. Some sellers on Etsy are already touting “Bernie inspired” mittens. Last year, online merchants cashed in on the fly that buzzed on former Vice President Mike Pence during the debate against Kamala Harris. The Biden campaign sold more than 35,000 fly swatters with the slogan, “truth over flies,” a play on the campaign’s slogan “truth over lies.”
Ellis couldn’t be reached for comment, butshe told the Jewish Insider that “there’s no possible way I could make 6,000 pairs of mittens, and every time I go into my email, another several hundred people have emailed me.”
“I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one of a kind and they’re unique and, sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want,” she told the news site.
The virality and levity of the Bernie meme is reminiscent of more carefree days of the internet. As one Twitter user captured it, “The Bernie Sanders memes and photoshops are what the world needs right now.”
This isn’t the first time the mittens have been in the spotlight either. Last year, Sanders wore them to the Women’s March in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; some called the mittens “oversized mittens” and a dedicated Twitter account, @BerniesMittens, was born. At the time, Ellis said she was “humbled by the support” and “what started out as a simple act of kindness more than 2 years ago has grown into something beyond my imagination.”
She added: “This mitten frenzy is really distracting me from getting my mid-year report cards done.”
In a statement to CNN on Thursday, Sanders said the meme this week “makes people aware that we make good mittens in Vermont. … We have some good coats as well.”
GUANGZHOU, China — Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand formerly owned by Huawei, has launched its first device since being sold off.
Huawei sold Honor, its budget smartphone brand, in November to a consortium of buyers in China, as a way to help the unit survive in the face of U.S. sanctions.
In 2019, Huawei was put on a U.S. export blacklist called the Entity List which restricted American firms from selling certain components to the Chinese technology giant. This included both semiconductors and software.
Google was forced to cut ties to Huawei, meaning the U.S. search giant’s Android mobile operating system could not be installed on the Chinese firm’s devices. That hurt Huawei’s sales badly in international markets.
Last year, Huawei sold Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, a consortium of 30 agents and dealers. At the time, Huawei said that the sale was made so Honor could “make it through this difficult time.”
“Splitting off the Honor team should help it get the components that it needs, although that could still take many months and is never guaranteed, especially given the geopolitical tension in the air,” Bryan Ma, vice president of devices research at IDC said.
“Nonetheless, the move helps to keep the team engaged with suppliers in the hopes that it can continue with its product development.”
The majority of Honor’s sales come from China. In 2019, Honor shipped 64 million smartphones globally, according to IDC. In the first nine months of 2020, the company has shipped 42 million units. Complete data for 2020 is not yet available.
The V40
Honor’s new smartphone is called the V40. It boasts a 6.72-inch display and comes in three colors: silver, black and rose gold.
Honor talked up the phone’s graphics processing and touchscreen capabilities, features that enhance gaming on the device, a popular use of smartphones in China.
It has the ability to connect to next-generation 5G mobile networks, a key requirement in China which is the world’s largest market for 5G phones.
The V40 uses a key 5G chip from Taiwan’s MediaTek, a company which became China’s number one smartphone semiconductor supplier in 2020.
Honor’s V40 starts at 3,599 yuan ($556) for the 128GB storage option and 3,999 yuan for the 256GB version. It will be released in China but it is unclear if it will be launched internationally.
“The message they (Honor) want to convey is they inherited a lot from Huawei, no matter if it’s the chipset capability, photography, and R&D (research and development) all the things they got from Huawei devices, they have it all,” Nicole Peng, a mobile analyst at Canalys said.
“They don’t want to show they are missing the R&D capability that Huawei has. They want to show they still have it and they have a big team in R&D and that is something people were asking when they separated, whether they can maintain that kind of innovation.”
