Circana sells its insight into US hardware sales, so it’s rare we get an actual glimpse into the PS5’s sales pattern quite like this.
But analyst Mat Piscatella, who last week said Marvel’s Wolverine was the primary driver behind Sony’s console sales in September, has responded to the doubters with an actual graph.
The data shows a fairly steady pattern starting 27th June, which sees two major boosts on the week of 5th September and the week of 19th September. Those are the weeks when NBA 2K27 and Marvel’s Wolverine released respectively, of course.
I’m not exactly sure what people were criticising Piscatella for, but I think many people were trying to argue that GTA 6 was the real reason behind the PS5’s strong month of sales – not Marvel’s Wolverine.
Piscatella writes:
“While upcoming games may have primed some US consumers to be more open to purchase a new PS5, it wasn’t until the week Marvel’s Wolverine dropped that this purchase decision was activated.
And no, I do not think we are seeing evidence of a ramp up in PS5 baseline demand leading into November yet.”
I think it’s pretty irrefutable based on this data that Marvel’s Wolverine is what accelerated the PS5’s sales in September, which helped it to outsell the newer and cheaper Switch 2.
It’s worth remembering that there was a Marvel’s Wolverine bundle available at launch, which certainly would have contributed to these figures as well.
It’d be interesting to see this same data as we get closer to 19th November, and whether there’s a steady ramp in PS5 sales as we get closer to GTA 6’s launch.
