Microsoft Has Likely Sold Fewer Than 30 Million Xbox Series X|S Consoles

In its latest earnings release, Take-Two reports that hardware makers have sold 94+ million current-generation video games consoles. Because that figure includes only PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, the game publisher has–inadvertently or not–given us a reliable estimate of how many Xbox Series X|S consoles that Microsoft has sold so far.

Here’s the math. We know that Sony sold 65.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles through September 30, 2024. Take-Two’s 94+ million figure is as of the end of November 2024. Given how late we are in this console cycle, it’s unlikely that either company sold many consoles in that two month gap, or that the sales delta changed much. So we can roughly estimate that Microsoft has sold, at best, about 29 million Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Many will look at those figures and see a disaster. But Microsoft was outsold by Sony in the previous console generation by an estimated 2-to-1 ratio. And we had expected the gap with the current generation to be even worse, perhaps even 3-to-1. But if these figures are accurate, Sony is outselling Xbox by 2.25-to-1. Not great by any measure. But better than expected.

Microsoft hasn’t published Xbox console sales figures since 2015, about two years into the Xbox One generation. This was about the time that the software giant shifted its Xbox strategy to focus more on software and services than hardware. And from a financial reporting perspective, to focus on soft data related to engagement to communicate the relative success of the platform.