Due to stock shortages, it has happened more than once that the Xbox Series sells more than the PlayStation 5 “domestically”!

The quotation mark is no coincidence: although Sony is a Japanese company, the PlayStation brand is more American (which doesn’t even respect Japanese tradition enough to have the usual ‘Circle’ – okay, X – back button layout swapped to be the same on the PlayStation 5 as in the West), but you’d expect it to beat Microsoft, which is treated as a foreigner in the country (and therefore barely had respectable sales, especially during the Xbox 360 and Xbox One era).

Once again, it has failed to do so: Famitsu reports on sales for June 13-19. The Xbox Series X sold 3272 units, and the Xbox Series S sold 3423. That’s surprising, but given the smaller size, it’s no wonder the Japanese prefer a more convenient option. In contrast, the PlayStation 5 Standard Edition managed 2,371 sales, and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition only managed 664 sales. 6695 versus 3035. So Microsoft’s consoles sold twice as many as Sony’s!

We should also look at sales projected over the same period last year. In the week starting June 14, the Xbox Series X sold 3141 units, the Xbox Series S sold 543, the PlayStation 5 Standard Edition sold 13905, and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition sold only 1441. 3684 versus 15346. That’s a total of 9730 consoles sold in one week this year, compared to 19030 last year. Given that both consoles launched in November 2020, you can’t bet that they’ve reached their ceiling, and there’s no one to sell to: the Nintendo Switch sold 50,405 copies in a week this year and 75,077 copies last year…

There’s a console shortage, but let’s not forget that total sales of PlayStation 5 in Japan are at 1.69 million units, while the Xbox Series duo is at just 122,000. Still, this case proves that Microsoft is in a slightly better position (it’s true, Xbox’s CFO has already said, and we wrote, that he expects no improvement this year…).

Source: PSL