Who has the best console sales of all time? That'd be Nintendo, who has shipped over 800.7 million handhelds and consoles since reviving the global games market in 1983.
Back in the 80s and 90s, the console wars defined an entire generation of consumer products. The classic SEGA vs Nintendo battle evolved once Sony jumped into the ring in 1994, and the PlayStation brand (along with bad decisions on SEGA's part) eventually pushed the Blue Blur's parent out of the console market altogether.
Then Microsoft emerged in 2001 and kicked off the current three-way competition we see today between Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. It's been that way ever since. So how much hardware has each console-maker sold?
The answer is a bit tricky because sales data isn't always perfect (Microsoft no longer reports console sales so their numbers are estimates).
Both Nintendo and Sony have provided consistent and reliable sales figures, though, and based on these numbers Nintendo is firmly in the lead.
Nintendo has sold 800.7 million hardware from 1983 - present, beating PlayStation's 564 million total sales by over 236 million. Of course, Nintendo has been on the market for 11 more years than Sony.
- Nintendo console sales - 800.7 million (1983 - Present)
- PlayStation console sales - 564 million (1994 - Present)
- Microsoft console sales - 165.5 million (2001 - Present)
- SEGA console sales - 63.16 million (1988 - 2001)
- Atari console sales - 32 million (1977 - 1992)
Special thanks to ResetERA's Celine for inspiring me to collect the data and make this graph.
Sources: Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and data collected on Wikipedia.
