Ampere Analysis points out that the PlayStation 5 is in a solid situation, though.

According to Ampere, since the November launch of the Xbox Series, 2.8 million units have been sold. It’s slightly less than what the Xbox One put together in late 2013 and early 2014 (2.9 million sales). Meanwhile, the PlayStation 5’s situation can be considered positive: 4.2 million sales since the November launch, which puts it on the same level as the PlayStation 4’s launch.

Two things distort the situation, though: both consoles suffer from heavy lack of supply (and we recently wrote about how the situation might be present even throughout the year), and the PlayStation 4 has pulled 4.2 million sales without the Japanese market, as it launched in Q1 2014, not the same day as in the West. Ampere’s numbers are for sales to customers, so this explains why its 4.2 million figure is smaller than what Sony officially announced (4.5 million consoles shipped to retailers). The whole situation is boosted by the coronavirus global pandemic.

Ampere believes that the PlayStation 5 would likely have sold more than 5 million units if availability had been less of an issue. The firm predicts that the console will sell between 7.6 and 8 million sales by the end of March, which would outperform the PlayStation 4’s 7.5 million result in the same time frame. Meanwhile, Microsoft wasn’t able to pull an advantage from its hardware advantages, but the lack of stocks can be a distorting factor here as well. The cheaper Xbox Series S, and the fact that the simultaneous launch happened in three times more markets than with the Xbox One in 2013, still saw the Redmond-based company sell 100k less Xbox Series than what it did of the Xbox One in the same time frame, despite the X1 being expensive, forcing the Kinect on all early adopters.

Ampere adds that Microsoft is focusing on recurring revenue (Game Pass), the traditional Xbox Series console sales will remain a cornerstone in the company’s strategy until at least 2025, and by then, Game Pass and xCloud could be taking over. We should also mention Nintendo’s successes: the big N sold 26.3 million Nintendo Switch units, outperforming its previous record year (the Nintendo Wii once reached 24.5 million sales in a year), and it was attributed to „pandemic-induced spending,” plus Animal Crossing: New Horizons becoming a true killer app.

So advantage for the PlayStation 5 for now.

Source: Gamesindustry