Summary
- The pace of PS5 sales has surpassed the PS4’s by 4%, while the Xbox Series X/S’ is behind the Xbox One’s by 19%.
- Recent reports put the PS5 at a lifetime total of 65 million units sold, far ahead of the Xbox Series X/S’ 30 million.
- Sony is expected to dominate this generation with the PS5 selling well and Microsoft releasing Xbox games on the console.
A new report indicates that the PlayStation 5 is currently selling more units than the PlayStation 4, while the Xbox Series X/S has been trailing considerably behind the Xbox One. While most gamers would not be surprised to learn that the Xbox Series X/S is struggling to compete with the PS5, it’s still impressive that Sony’s current-gen console is selling so well.
Both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X/S were released in November 2020. However, despite both consoles releasing roughly at the same time, the PS5 is vastly outselling the Xbox Series X. Recent reports indicate that the PS5 sold over 65 million units, while the Xbox Series X/S sold around 30 million.
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Now, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella has shared new numbers about how well the current console generation is doing, and the results are fairly different for PS5 and Xbox. According to Piscatella, when tracking its 52 months in the market, the pace of PS5 units sold has exceeded the PS4’s by 7%, indicating that the console has been pretty successful. On the other hand, the Xbox Series XS is currently 19% behind in sales when compared to the Xbox One, which was already vastly outsold by the PS4. Data shows that the PS4 sold around 117.2 million units in its lifetime, while the Xbox One sold about 58 million, and it seems that the divide has become even wider during the current generation.
Sony Maintains the Lead in the Current Generation by a Wide Margin
- PS5 has sold 4% more units than the PS4.
- Xbox Series X/S has sold 19% fewer units than the Xbox One.
The PS5 had excellent sales during the last holiday season, which probably helped it to get these numbers. According to Sony’s reports, 9.5 million units of PS5 were sold between October and December 2024.
Despite these good numbers, other reports have shown that overall video game hardware sales were way down in January 2025. According to one of Piscatella’s previous reports, 2025 had the worst January for hardware sales since 2020, with sales falling by 45% when compared to 2024.
With these sales, it’s virtually guaranteed that Sony will be the biggest winner of this generation. Microsoft has recently announced that multiple first-party Xbox games are going to the PS5, with Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition and Age of Mythology: Retold being some of the most recent ones. These are only some of the Xbox games to reach the PS5, however, as other titles such as Forza Horizon 5 have already been announced, and others like Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush were released for the console in the past.
