Sony hopes to sell 5 million PlayStation 4 consoles before April

Sony is betting big on its upcoming next-gen console—the PlayStation 4. According to Eurogamer , Sony’s Andrew House has stated that the company hopes to sell 5 million consoles before the end of the financial year, which will end on March 31. This means that the company essentially has to sell a million consoles every month. House stated this fact at the ongoing Tokyo Game Show.

The PlayStation 4 is set to hit North American shores on November 15 and European shores on November 29. There’s no word on when the rest of the world will be getting their hands on the console. Microsoft’s Xbox One will be hitting 14 countries on November 25, which is right between the PS4’s two release dates.

Five million doesn’t sound like too bad a number

Earlier this month, PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed over Twitter that the PlayStation 4 will allow simultaneous support for up to four controllers . For the sake of comparison, the Xbox One will be able to support up to eight controllers simultaneously .

Yoshida, however, hasn’t elaborated on Sony’s decision to keep such a low controller count. It is probably for practical reasons, since rarely have gamers actually played local multiplayer with more than three people. The closest anyone got to using all of the controller capabilities of consoles was Rock Band on the PlayStation 3, which almost hit the limit.

For further comparison, the current-gen Xbox 360 is able to support up to four controllers simultaneously, while the PlayStation 3 can support up to seven. The most these extra controller “slots” were used for included peripheral-heavy games like Rock Band.