It has been more than a year since the release of Xbox Series X/S and PS5, and both machines have been going strong with record-breaking sale- so much so that it’s still almost impossible to pick them up at retail (although the global semiconductor shortage is hugely responsible for that as well). Interestingly, Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls believes that Sony had quite an eventful 2021 with regards to PS5 sales, and supposedly sold almost double that of Xbox Series X/S units.
While 17 million units isn’t small sales figure by any means, the global component shortage has undoubtedly hindered a lot of potential sales for Sony. The Ampere research director estimates that Xbox Series X/S had sold 10.3 million units by the end of the year. Thus, Sony enjoyed almost double the sales of its competition.
“Sony ended 2021 with PS5 cumulative sell-through reaching 17.1 million units, around 1.7 times the performance of Xbox Series sales,” the analyst said (via VGC). “At this early stage the global sales momentum is with Sony, but it will be frustrated that its potential has been undermined by product availability.”
A point worth noting is that Harding-Rolls’ estimates are directly at odds with recent estimates from Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners (who estimated that Xbox Series consoles sold around 12 million units). Another point worth looking into is that while head of Xbox Phil Spencer acknowledged Xbox Series X/S to be its best selling consoles, Harding-Rolls believes it to be on par with Xbox One.
“Microsoft ended 2021 with its Xbox Series family of devices reaching cumulative sell-through of 10.3 million units,” he said. “This is on a par with the previous generation Xbox One cycle.”
What awaits for these consoles this year remains to be seen, although Harding-Rolls himself estimated PS5 to once again sell twice that of Xbox Series X/S- read more on that through here.