Nintendo vs PlayStation: Hardware sales showdown

Nintendo and Sony have both updated their hardware sales figures, so we decided to take a closer look at how these two gaming titans compare in console and handheld sales.

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The Nintendo Switch just passed 125 million shipments, and Sony's PlayStation 5 has now reached 38.4 million shipments worldwide. This pushes both platform-holder's respective hardware sales up a smidgen over last quarter, but it's still interesting to put the numbers up against each other. We would include Xbox hardware sales, however that data is spotty, and we're instead relying on information provided by Sony and Nintendo.

There's some big context points that we need to go over beforehand. First, Nintendo hardware pre-dates PlayStation by 11 years. And second, this data is in sell-in, or shipments made to retailers, and does not reflect the full sell-through figures that represent the actual units sold to consumers.

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Nintendo vs PlayStation Hardware Sales Comparison

• Nintendo - 836.65 million, first console (NES) debuted in 1983, 11 year lead over Sony
• PlayStation - 592.8 million, first console (PS1) debuted in 1994

In this coverage, I'll attempt to put both PlayStation and Nintendo hardware ecosystems into perspective insofar as shipments/sell-in. The data is meant to show where both companies were and where they are now in terms of hardware.

Long story short: Both Nintendo and Sony are doing well, even if the former's Switch sales are starting to slow down and lead to lower year-over-year earnings. Sony, however, is pulling in record earnings across the board with a massive $26.9 billion generated in FY22.

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