Sam Machkovech
While we are still waiting for the exact sales figures for the latest video game consoles from last year, certain statistics have started to appear which, at least in the USA, offer a clear Sony PlayStation 5 advantage. As it turns out, the advantage is historically significant.
NPD Group, a long-time retail analyst, confirmed through bricks and mortar and digital sales figures that PlayStation 5 has sold several units than any other console sold in the first five months in the US.
NPD rarely confirms the exact sales figures, and combining an estimate of PS5 sales in the US so far is therefore a bit difficult. In early 2018, Nintendo claimed the title of the best-selling console in US history, with a 10-month mark, at which time the company sold “over 4.8 million” Switch consoles.
At the time, Nintendo’s announced sales figures included the launch in March 2017 and the next holiday period in 2017. Any more detailed understanding of the 4.8 million switches sold in the US in its first five months is a guess. ours, since Nintendo otherwise collects sales of switches in “America” for its investor relations announcements. (At 3.5 months, Switch sold 7.81 million units throughout “America”).
And the release numbers tell only part of a console’s success story. Even the Wii U had gangbuster sales out of the gate, with an overall number in the first two months of 3.06 million. The global number for the Wii U also makes me wonder: has the PS5 sold so many consoles in the US because Sony chose to prioritize the region over Japan, Europe, and other major PlayStation territories? NPD data do not say. (The same question applies to Microsoft, whose Xbox Series X / S recently managed to top the console’s top sales in India – a territory long known for its love of the PlayStation).
Number hunters might notice that NPD announced last month that the PS5 was the best-selling console in “total sales in dollars”, but not units; at the time, the latter was still in favor of the Nintendo Switch as a $ 300 console, compared to the $ 500 disc-based PS5 and the $ 400 disc-free PS5. A month later, the PS5’s leadership in the first five months of sales counts for both dollar sales and units sold.
Friday’s announcement, as posted by NPD CEO Mat Piscatella, did not include any sales estimates for Xbox Series X / S hardware. When asked, Piscatella noted that sales of the latest Microsoft consoles and Sony “leans heavily toward disc versions,” but did not provide further clarification, such as percentages.
March to March sales madness
Piscatella’s latest monthly report mostly screams good news for video game hardware, software and accessories. The switch is still the number one selling console in terms of units, both in March and throughout the first quarter, while the PS5 claimed the highest “hardware sales in dollars” for that three-month period. months. Americans spent $ 680 million on “video game hardware” in March, surpassing the previous year’s high of $ 552 million in 2008. And year-to-date hardware spending in the states is 81 percent higher in this year compared to last year in the same period of time, totaling $ 1.4 billion.
Beyond these numbers, Piscatella’s Twitter thread breaks down digital and traditional retail figures for Xbox, PlayStation and Switch games (though without Nintendo’s valuable digital eShop sales data for its first-party games) and points to another interesting note. about the apparent health of the PlayStation 5: the DualSense controller exclusively for PS5 is the best-selling accessory “in sales in dollars” in the first three months of 2021.
Kyle Orland contributed to this report.