41% of PS4 and PS5 owners are women, Sony reveals

PlayStation 5
(Image credit: Sony PlayStation)

Just over 40 percent of PS4 and PS5 owners are women, more than doubling the proportion of women who owned an original PlayStation.

Sony revealed the stat as one of the reasons "Why We Believe in PS5" in its latest presentation to investors. The slide, which features a piece of art showing women characters from across PlayStation franchises all gathered together for game night, specifies that 41% of people who own PS4 and PS5 are women, compared to being just 18% of owners of the first PlayStation.

Ideally, Sony would want every single human being to own a PS4 or PS5 (and maybe keep a spare in the guest room in case they have company), so the company probably still isn't satisfied with these figures. Nonetheless, it's a big step toward more equal representation from where the games industry stood in the '90s, and it's a good sign that Sony is taking pride in its progress.

The slide also cites how owners of the original PlayStation have stuck with the brand over time, judging by age demographics, and how the PlayStation brand is steadily expanding in markets outside of North America, Europe, and Japan. Then a few slides after that is where somebody accidentally used a fan-made God of War: Ragnarok logo in the list of upcoming PS5 games, which has since been replaced.

An analyst group has reported that PS5 outsold Xbox Series X by more than double in the first quarter of this year, and who knows what will happen once it's easier to find PS5 stock.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

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