30 Million (Premium)

Sony had some good news for gamers today, and it’s interesting to compare PS5 sales to those of the Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. That would be especially true if we had hard numbers for Xbox.

“Everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally, starting from this point forward,” Sony PlayStation head Jim Ryan said at CES this week, as he revealed that the gaming giant has now sold over 30 million PlayStation 5 consoles. Even better, he said that the component shortage is finally over. And the official PlayStation account tweeted that “December was the biggest month ever for PS5 console sales.”

So. How did we get here?

The PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020. Sony announced the following February that it had sold 4.5 million units, during the pandemic and amidst a historic supply chain and component availability problem. Sales hit about 8 million in April 2021, 10 million by July 2021, 17.3 million by February 2022, and 19.3 million by May 2022. Heading into the 2022 holiday selling season, Sony indicated that the supply chain issues were easing up, and its latest sales total confirms that.

But it is perhaps sobering to compare these figures to the PS4’s predecessor, which didn’t suffer from similar external problems.

The PlayStation 4 launched in November 2014. The oldest post I can find about PS4 sales on Thurrott.com dates back to May 26, 2016, about 18 months later, by which point Sony had sold 40 million units. So the PS4 was on a much faster sales pace. It hit 50 million units in December 2016, 100 million units in July 2019, and then the newest post I can find says 103 million units as of October 2019. But Google tells me that the console ended its active lifecycle with a bit over 117 million units sold. That’s a big improvement over the PlayStation 3, which had sold about 87 million units in its lifetime.

Microsoft sold almost that many Xbox 360s back in the day, but it stopped releasing hard sales numbers after the Xbox One stumbled out of the gate in November 2014. Years later, we discovered that Microsoft likely sold somewhere between 50 and 55 million Xbox Ones overall during its active lifetime. And while Microsoft launched the Xbox Series X|S alongside the PS5 and facing identical supply chain issues, one estimate suggests that the software giant sold over 12 million units in its first year or so of availability. If true, Microsoft made up some of the ground that it had lost in the previous generation: instead of being outsold 2-to-1, it was by then outsold by only 3-to-2 or so.

Where the Xbox Series X|S stands today is anybody’s guess. But heading into this past holiday season, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said that the Xbox Series X would be difficult to find in stores, while the supply of the cheaper Xbox Series S was much improved. Indeed, Microsoft even offered the console at a $50 discount over Black Friday, suggesting that its supply was excellent. So perhaps Microsoft has made up some ground too. I’d love to see some numbers, any numbers, for Xbox console sales.

The Nintendo Switch, meanwhile, has been in the market longer—it launched in March 2017, so over two and a half years before the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S—and it arguably doesn’t compete directly with the Sony and Microsoft offerings because it is a different type of console and targets a decidedly different audience. And it wasn’t launched in the middle of a component shortage like the other two consoles. Still, the comparison is interesting.

The Switch got off to a fast start. Nintendo sold 15 million units in its first year and it surpassed total GameCube sales, with 22 million units, in just 15 months. By May 2021, Nintendo had sold 85 million units, and by February 2022, it was Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time, with over 103.5 million units sold. That figure jumped to 111 million units by August, and while Nintendo lowered its sales forecast for 2022, it still hit over 114 million units before the end of November 2022. There’s no word yet on how it finished up in 2022.

Since the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S both launched in November 2020, it is also somewhat interesting to compare how the Switch has sold comparatively in the same time frame. And that’s not too hard because Nintendo announced in November 2020 that it would sell 24 million Switch units that calendar year. Ignoring those sales and not knowing what Nintendo has sold since this past November, the math tells us that the firm sold well over 90 million units. It’s probably closer to 100 million. So that’s 90-100 million units vs. 30 million (PS5) and ~20 million (Xbox).

I know, it’s not fair. Piling on, the Switch has also been around enough to benefit from product improvements, something we’ve not yet seen with the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, which are probably due for some cost reductions in late 2023. Nintendo shipped an updated version of the Switch in July 2019, the Switch Lite in September 2019, and an OLED version in October 2021. A planned Pro version was designed but scrapped, but one wonders if such a thing will surface in the future.

That said, Sony has at least publicly acknowledged one major PS5 upgrade: it will ship its second-generation PlayStation VR2 system in February. This is a part of the market that Microsoft, the AR innovator, has completely ignored, and one that Sony has led to great success. But at $550, the PS VR2 will be a tough sell for all but the most ardent VR fans. Interesting? You can preorder it now.