Sam Machkovech
While we’re still waiting on exact sales numbers for last year’s newest video game consoles, select stats have begun to emerge that, at least in the US, give a clear lead to Sony’s PlayStation 5. As it turns out, the lead is historically significant.
The NPD Group, a longtime retail analyst, has confirmed via brick-and-mortar and digital sales figures that the PlayStation 5 sold more units than any other console sold in its first five months in the US.
NPD rarely confirms exact sales figures, and stitching together an estimate of PS5 sales in the US thus far is therefore a bit tricky. In early 2018, Nintendo claimed the title of fastest selling console in US history at a mark of 10 months, by which point the company had sold “more than 4.8 million” Switch consoles.
At that time, Nintendo’s announced span of sales figures included both its March 2017 launch and its subsequent holiday 2017 period. Any more granular understanding of how many of those 4.8 million Switches sold in the US in its first five months is guesswork on our part, since Nintendo otherwise lumps Switch sales in “the Americas” for its investor relations announcements. (At the 3.5-month mark, the Switch had sold 7.81 million units throughout the entirety of “the Americas.”)
And launch numbers only tell some of a console’s success story. Even the Wii U had gangbuster sales out of the gate, with a global tally in its first two months of 3.06 million. That global number for Wii U also makes me wonder: did the PS5 sell so many consoles in the US because Sony chose to prioritize the region over Japan, Europe, and other major PlayStation territories? The NPD data doesn’t say. (The same question goes for Microsoft, whose Xbox Series X/S managed to recently top India’s console sales charts—a territory that has long been known for loving the PlayStation.)
Number hunters might note that the NPD announced last month that the PS5 was the fastest-selling console in “total dollar sales” but not units; at the time, the latter was still in Nintendo Switch’s favor as a $300 console, compared to the $500 disc-based PS5 and $400 discless PS5 model. One 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 Executive Director Mat Piscatella, did not include any sales estimates for the Xbox Series X/S hardware. When we asked, Piscatella noted that the sales of both Microsoft’s and Sony’s newest consoles “lean heavily toward the disc versions,” but he did not provide additional clarification, such as percentages.
Marching toward March sales madness
Piscatella’s latest monthly report mostly screams good news for video game hardware, software, and accessory sales. The Switch is still the number-one selling console in terms of units, both in the month of March and the entire first quarter, while the PS5 claimed the highest “hardware dollar sales” for that three-month period. Americans spent $680 million on “video game hardware” in March, beating the month’s prior high of $552 million in 2008. And year-to-date hardware spending in the states is 81 percent higher this year compared to last year in the same span of time, totaling $1.4 billion.
Beyond those numbers, Piscatella’s Twitter thread breaks down digital and traditional retail sales figures for Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch games (albeit without Nintendo’s precious eShop digital sales data for its first-party games), and it points to one other interesting note about the PlayStation 5’s apparent health: the PS5-exclusive DualSense controller is the best-selling accessory “in dollar sales” for the first three months of 2021.
Kyle Orland contributed to this report.
