According to a report from Ampere Games, the PS5 has sold more than twice as many units as the Xbox Series X|S in the first quarter of 2021 globally. The analyst believes that while the Xbox Series X|S consoles sold around 1.3 million units in the first three months of the year, the PlayStation 5 managed to approach the 3 million figure during the same time period.
The Nintendo Switch, on the other hand, was in a class of its own, selling close to 6 million units in the first quarter. That’s nearly twice as much as the PS5 and more than four times as much as the Series X|S. It’s interesting to note that while Microsoft and Sony make little to nothing from the sales of their console hardware, Nintendo actually makes a good chunk of money from the sales of the Switch hardware. It’s impressive to see a console that has been out for several years beat newly launched alternatives from the competition (yes, the shortages are there but now they’re affecting even Nintendo) despite offering inferior image quality and a much smaller screen size.
It’ll be really interesting to see how the successor to the Switch performs when it launches next year. All signs indicate to it using NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace architecture (unreleased as of now) along with support for multiple proprietary technologies such as DLSS and possibly even ray-tracing support.
