Nintendo Switch leads the market, followed by PlayStation, but there are markets that are tighter than others.
Although there are companies that lately are placing more emphasis on the number of users of their digital services, the truth is the sale of consoles it remains one of the main indicators of the position of each of the platforms in the market and its popularity among users. Although it is not the only one, of course.
In this sense, Sony and Nintendo publish their hardware sales data every x time, either in a quarterly report or when a certain vein milestone is reached. It is Microsoft that many years ago stopped providing Xbox sales data to now focus on sharing the number of Xbox Game Pass usersthat would already exceed 25 million users. That is why this **comparison of sales between Xbox Series X | S and PS5 is so interesting in its first 100 weeks on sale.
A generation start marked by the lack of stock
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S hit the market at the end of 2020 with an incipient crisis of supplies, transport and energy that continues to this day in a situation equal to or worse than that of two years ago. This means that there was, and still is, very little stock of new generation consolesbut even so, both Sony and Micrsoft managed to bring a good number of devices to market.
Thanks to VGChartz We see today what that sales comparison between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S would be like during its first 100 weeks on sale (around two years) and how they compare in turn with the beginnings of Nintendo Switch, which came out in 2017 We have to take into account details such as that PlayStation 5 reached the market in stages by region or that we were entering a global economic crisis after a large-scale pandemic, but good. The ranking would be as follows (by millions of consoles sold):
- Nintendo Switch: 30,599,713
- PlayStation 5: 24,210,339
- Xbox Series X|S: 17,389,932
Thanks to this graph we see that PS5 had the best start of the three consoles and it came to position itself above Nintendo Switch in the middle of the table, until finally the Nintendo console takes off and in week 100 since its release it surpasses PlayStation 5 in a total of 6.39 million consoles sold (13.21 million over Xbox Series X|S).
In this sense, Nintendo Switch would enjoy a market share of 42.4%, PS5 stands at 33.5% and Xbox Series X|S at 24.1%. The thing is not like that currently, since it is a comparison with the first months of Switch on sale, when the Nintendo console has been on the market for five years and would have sold more than 102 million consoles.
PS5 vs Xbox Series X | S, by region
By region, we see that the difference between the three platforms narrows a lot, although Switch is still the main platform in two of the three regions studied. At least in the case of the United States, the only region where Sony did not dare to increase the price of PS5. Nintendo Switch would continue to lead the market, while PS5 and Xbox Series X | S would have a technical tie. This is how the data would look:
- Switch: 10,773,964
- PlayStation 5: 8,782,988
- Xbox Series X|S: 8,126,109
As we travel east, things change. In Europe we see a very clear advantage for PlayStation 5, as has been traditional since the arrival of Sony consoles on the market. Sony’s console would occupy 40% of the market share and would surpass Nintendo Switch by almost a million units sold, while Xbox Series X | S would be almost four million below. It would be really interesting to see a breakdown by country to see how I would walk the market share in regions like Spain, but we will have to settle for this data:
- PlayStation 5: 8,342,411
- Nintendo Switch: 7,744,653
- Xbox Series X|S: 4,772,458
We finally arrive in Japan, the market with the greatest advantage of Nintendo Switch so far. the console of Nintendo would lead the street sector with 75% of market share and would surpass PS5 by about five million consoles sold. A clear symptom of the predilection for portable gaming that continues to spread in Asia, either with consoles or mobile phones. Xbox Series X | S occupies a marginal position of just over 360 thousand units sold, despite the fact that this generation of Microsoft consoles is having much more success in Japan than the previous one. This is how the numbers would look:
- Nintendo Switch: 7,287,904
- PlayStation 5: 1,984,533
- Xbox Series X|S: 367,527
Dispute between PlayStation and Microsoft
There has always been rivalry between PlayStation and Microsoft in the field of consoles since the arrival of the American company in the industry, but in recent weeks it has become more fierce than usual due to the purchase of Activision Blixzard by Microsoft, even pending validation by international organizations. While Sony tries to prevent the purchase so that Call of Duty does not leave its platform due to the huge amount of income it generates, Microsoft accuses Sony of anti-competitive practices due to its dominant position in the industry, such as blocking games to Xbox Game Pass , and dates the departure of Call of Duty from PlayStation if future agreements between the parties are not reached.
We will see how the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) of the United Kingdom pronounces itself in the coming weeks, in addition to the American organization and the European Union, the other two giants that have to give the go-ahead to this absorption of Microsoft that would be closed by almost 70 billion dollars. It is not only the largest purchase in the history of the video game industry, it is also the largest in the history of Microsoft, and that has made high-level investments throughout its history.