Switch sales have surpassed Xbox One

The Xbox One has been on the market for 73 months now, or roughly six years, but it's already being surpassed by Nintendo's relatively new Switch console-handheld hybrid.

On the heels of today's 52.48 million Switch sales milestone, analysts have chimed in to add more color to these numbers by comparing them to other systems.

According to Niko Partners' Daniel Ahmad, the Switch has now sold-in more units than Microsoft's Xbox One (remember sold-in is shipments to retailers, not full-on sales). There's a few takeaways here. One is the astronomical rate that Nintendo is moving Switch systems; poised in between the lifecycle of the Xbox One and PS4, Nintendo has leveraged the full brunt of its first-party games and a host of third-party re-release and indies to attract gamers to its innovative transforming handheld.

Another quick lifetime comparison illustrates Nintendo's accelerated hardware sales. The Switch has been on the market for roughly 34 months compared to the Xbox One's 74 months. In less than half the time, the Switch has outsold the Xbox One (this isn't downing Microsoft, they make over $1 billion from Xbox every quarter with strong software/services, but more of a comparative point).

It also helps the Switch is a huge success in Japan, one of the key overseas markets where consumers spend big on games over time. The Xbox One failed to capture that market.

The second takeaway illustrates Xbox One's total sales. It's inferred the Xbox One has sold over 50 million units since its release, or roughly half of the PlayStation 4's huge 106 million install base. No one knows for sure how much the system has shipped because Microsoft stopped reporting figures, but these estimates aren't nearly as rough as some people expected.

As far as Switch sales, Nintendo moved a huge 10.81 million consoles in the 2019 Holiday quarter alone. More than half of that was from the new Switch Lite. Nintendo expects to sell over 19 million Switch consoles by the fiscal year's end on March 31, 2020.

But some perspective is also needed. The Switch is cheaper than the Xbox One, or at least has been historically at launch, where the Xbox One released at a pricey $499. It's also a different type of system. Nintendo's system is a handheld-console hybrid, with a cheaper $199 handheld-only option to boot, whereas the Xbox One is a dedicated system. Different selling points, different games, different pricing.