Tweet
According to the director of research and insights at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, Sony shipped about five times as many PlayStation 5 units than Microsoft shipped of the Xbox Series X|S in the last financial quarter.
We know that Sony shipped 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles during the three-month period that ended March 31, 2024. While still a decent number of units sold, this is actually down from the same period in 2023 when it had shipped 6.3 million units.
In addition to the numbers from Sony, Microsoft revealed that their Xbox hardware revenues declined 31% in this most recent quarter. Unlike Sony, Microsoft does not share information on how many Xbox units were shipped or sold.
According to insights and best guess estimates gathered by Niko Partners, and shared by Ahmad, Sony actually outsold the Xbox Series X|S by a factor of 5 to 1. Taking the 4.5 million units shipped for PlayStation 5, this would place Xbox shipments at just about 900,000 for the past quarter.
Ahmad added a little bit of additional context to these figures. He said that this large of a gap between the two companies is an outlier. Ahmad says that the lifetime sales differences between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S is closer to a 2 to 1 ratio. Still, it's been said that total sales of the Xbox Series X|S are only 29 million units. In comparison, total sales of the Xbox One were around 58 million units.
Just a week ago, Microsoft closed down Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Alpha Dog Games. They merged Roundhouse Studios with ZeniMax Online Studios. In January 2024, Microsoft also announced that they were laying off 1,900 people across multiple gaming divisions. Microsoft has also started to push more towards releasing multiplatform titles, but they haven't fully gone down the SEGA route just yet.
