Read your own graph. Fewer sales than PS4, a disastrous past two years almost half of the start of the gen. PS4 graph shows improvement YoY except the last year which is normal.
PS5 has shown stagnation with inflated numbers through COVID, then a monumental drop-off, followed by stagnation.
If this gen is so profitable for Sony, does it not give you pause as to why they haven't decreased the price of PS5? Some saying they can't, when obviously they can, unless this graph is bollocks.
The current sales and demand of PS5 mid-gen is equal to the final year of PS4. But sure, everything is hunky dory.
The graph says that as of March 2024 they almost (must be already achieved by now) generated more revenue than in any previous generation. And more profit than in all combined. So they are better than ever.
"disastrous past two years" -> fantasy debunked by that graph
"monumental drop-off" and stagnation" -> fantasy debunked by that graph, revenue keeps growing evey year
If you mean the drop in profit, according to what Sony said these two years it's because of the costs of their acquisitions (which includes growing their studios) plus also the rise hardware component costs. But still, in half of the generation they made more profit than in all previous generations combined.
Regarding the price drop, they said that in all the previous generations the hardware components got cheaper over time, so even if they starting selling consoles at a loss, over time they ended selling it at a profit, with enough marget to apply price cuts. But in the PS5 happened the opposite, these components got more expensive over time, to the point that they couldn't apply price cut and instead forced them to increase it (in addition to inflation, currency exchange etc) to don't keep the loses from each unit sold too high. They also took several aggresive actions to improve their profitability and compensate that and continue working on it.
Regarding PS5 sales vs PS4, despide having had the shortages issues, not being able to price cut it and the global economical crysis, in terms of units PS5 is outselling PS4 in USA, Japan, China and some EU countries. But not worldwide by a little margin because in some other EU countries is behind. In terms of revenue is outselling PS5 worldwide. And the revenue from accesories, software, subscriptions and off-PS first party revenue is also in all time high, better than in any generation.
Regarding PS5 hardware sales slowing down in units, it's normal because it's what happens in all consoles when they past the peak of their sales cycle curve. As you can see in this other graph, the yearly sales make a somewhat curve for all home consoles, having their peak normally between somewhere their 3rd and 5th year and after that they normally keep declining every year. Switch is different because the curves of portables is different, with a later peak and a longer life than home consoles:
As Sony mentioned, PS5 yearly sales peaked last fiscal year. Which means that going worfard its yearly sales should be decreasing every year, as normal in a console's life cycle.
And well, launch aligned PS5 is super close to PS4. At the current point of the graph for PS5 (last march, when the most recent FY ended) was super close to PS4 and Switch and above them there was only the Wii exception, which had a crazy early peak and then faded, barely reaching slightly above 100M units sold at the end of its life. Sooner or later PS5 will pass Wii.
Regarding potential units sold during the second half of the PS5 generation, we have to consider that around half of the active PS userbase still is in PS4, meaning there's a ton of users who will upgrade later (pretty likely with GTA6 or when games like FIFA, AC, etc stop being crossgen or when big GaaS like Fortnite, Minecraft etc stop getting supported in PS4). And that around half of PS5 sales comes from users who are new to PS5. Meaning they come from Xbox, PC or because of the movies/tv shows.
So no, there's no stagnation or lack of demand at all. PS5 is one of the best performers in gaming history and is behaving as expected at this point of its life cycle.