Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
Last year saw the launch of new console hardware from both Microsoft and Sony following years of rumors and speculation. In early November 2020, each company pushed its new devices onto the market and neither has spent more than a few moments occupying shelf space as customers snapped them up in a flash. There is now a report that Microsoft was able to sell through nearly 3.5 million next-gen consoles since launch, placing it just over a million units behind Sony’s PS5, according to a market analyst.
The Xbox Series X|S sales figure comes by way of Niko Partners Senior Analyst Daniel Ahmad. He says that Microsoft’s next-gen consoles sold slightly over a million fewer units than PS5. Sony offered its sales figures for the PS5 by way of its Q3 2020 earnings report to investors.
Both next-gen consoles are based on similar hardware. Each uses CPUs and GPUs sourced from AMD that are manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. TSMC is the world’s premier supplier of chips for the tech industry, and like most companies, were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Microsoft and Sony were likely shipping consoles as fast as they could be manufactured, but both companies are smaller fish in the chip consumer market compared to a behemoth like Apple, which occupies much of TSMC’s production capacity with parts for iPhones.
With both the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 still experiencing retail scarcity several months into their respective lifespans, it could be expected that sales for these consoles will continue to soar until the insane consumer demand is satisfied.