The PlayStation 4 continues its reign as the world's most popular gaming console, with over 100 million sold (SNE)

• Sony's PlayStation 4 is one of the most popular video game consoles ever made.
• The console has now sold over 100 million units, and it reached that number faster than wildly popular consoles like Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 2.
• With a PlayStation 5 on the horizon in 2020, it's especially impressive that PlayStation 4 consoles are still selling as well as they are.
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Sony's PlayStation 4 continues to dominate as the most popular game console in the world, topping both Microsoft's Xbox One and Nintendo's Switch.

As of June 30, the PlayStation 4 surpassed 100 million consoles sold. Perhaps more impressive: The PlayStation 4 reached that lofty sales number faster than other red-hot game consoles of the past, like the Nintendo Wii and Sony's own PlayStation 2.

100 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold puts Sony in the console sales lead by a mile.

More specifically, Sony's PlayStation 4 sales are more than double that of the closest competition — Microsoft's Xbox One. Though Microsoft no longer reports sales numbers for its Xbox One console, estimates put the Xbox One somewhere in the realm of 30 - 70 million units sold.

Nintendo's Switch has experienced incredible success since it arrived in March 2017, but it trails behind Sony's PlayStation 4 by a mile — Nintendo says about 36 million Switch consoles have been sold since launch.

The continued success of the PlayStation 4 is due to several different factors:

• The PlayStation 4 was the less expensive console when it launched in 2013, coming in at $100 less than Microsoft's Xbox One.
• A lineup of killer blockbuster games, from "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" to "Horizon Zero Dawn" to "Bloodborne," made the PlayStation 4 a must-have console. All three of those games are only playable on PS4.
• The exclusives have gotten even better over time: Both "Spider-Man" and "God of War" arrived in 2018, and they were both excellent.
• Success begets success — the PlayStation 4 has overtaken the zeitgeist as "the" game console to own if you're going to buy a game console.
• There were incredible sales on the PlayStation 4 during the last few holiday seasons, with some retailers offering the console and a game for as low as $200 in holiday 2018.

Though Sony's exclusive game lineup is drying up as the PlayStation 4 transitions into the PlayStation 5 — Sony's next-gen console is expected to arrive in 2020 — an impressive array of major exclusives are currently in the works: "Ghost of Tsushima," "Death Stranding," and "The Last of Us: Part II" are all standouts coming exclusively to the PlayStation 4.

The first of those three, "Death Stranding," is scheduled to arrive on November 8.

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