Sony has taken another business step with the PS5, but it's probably not what you expected. Despite an ongoing struggle with stockouts, Sony's next-gen console has overtaken the Nintendo 64 in lifetime sales in the UK. The PS5 is now closing the gap to the Game Boy Advance, however it still lags behind the PS4.
According to Christopher Dring, director of GamesIndustry.biz, the PS5 isn't the only console to outperform a previous Nintendo console in lifetime sales. The Xbox Series X | S surpassed the GameCube "a few months ago." No exact sales figures were provided, though Dring believes if console stocks were more readily available "we'd be looking at a major record here."
The PS5 is now bigger than the N64 in the UK and closer to the GBA. The Xbox Series S/X surpassed the GameCube a few months ago. If only there were more stock, we'd be looking at a serious record here. Long Generation Ahead April 5, 2022
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The latest official figures we received from Sony confirmed that as of December 31, 2021, 17,3 million PS5 units had shipped worldwide. That's a slower pace than PS4, which sold an additional three million units in the same time frame, though there's certainly no shortage of demand.
Thanks to the current global semiconductor crisis, we have seen widespread hardware shortages across all areas of the industry following the Covid-19 pandemic, which jointly affected Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and many others.
In February, Sony lowered its PS5 sales forecast in its fiscal third-quarter results. At the time, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki provided a new shipping forecast of two million PS5 units between January and March 2022, a decrease of 1,3 million from 2021. Totoki believed this shortage would last until next year, but said the impact of the pandemic is different. vanish.
By comparison, the Xbox Series X stockout may finally be over, as we've seen more units hit digital and physical shelves in recent months. This is apparently due to an investment Microsoft made in April of last year to prioritize chip production across multiple factories. Increased inventory helped Xbox Series X | It's outselling the PS5 in the UK in March.
Numbers are not everything
When it comes to the N64, we still have a soft spot for Nintendo's retro console decades later and on the Switch we've seen a recent resurgence. In October 2021, the Nintendo Switch Online service added N64 (and Sega Mega Drive) games under a new subscription plan, the expansion pack. Of course, the emulation hasn't always been perfect, but we've seen improvements in recent updates.
The game library started with an early batch of classics like Star Fox 64, Super Mario 64, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Nintendo has added a game every month since then, recent additions like Paper Mario, Majora's Mask, and F-Zero X. As confirmed today, the next expansion pack title is the original Mario Golf, arriving on April 15.