This isn’t the PS5’s first sales milestone, but it’s certainly a step up over the PS4. Sony’s new-generation system has surpassed the Nintendo 64 in lifetime sales in the UK, despite the company’s ongoing struggles with supply shortages. However, even if the PS5 is closing in on the Game Boy Advance, it is still underperforming the PS4.
According to GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring, the PS5 isn’t the only console to overtake the lifetime sales of an older Nintendo console. For a short period of time, the Xbox Series X|S outpaced the GameCube. According to Dring, “we’d be seeing some real records breaking here” if console stock was more readily accessible.
According to Sony’s latest official data, 17.3 million PS5s were sold globally as of December 31, 2021. In comparison, the PS4 sold three million more devices in the same period, but demand isn’t lagging behind.
Following the Covid-19 epidemic, which hit companies like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and a slew of others, we’ve witnessed severe hardware shortages due to the ongoing global semiconductor problem.
PlayStation 5 sales were reduced in Sony’s third fiscal quarter reporting in February. During that time, Sony’s CFO Hiroki Totoki released a fresh projection for the shipment of two million PS5 systems between January and March 2022, a decline of 1.3 million units from the year before. The pandemic’s impact is diminishing, according to Totoki, who predicted shortages will continue throughout next year.
We’ve witnessed an increase in the number of Xbox Series X consoles on digital and physical stores in recent months, which suggests that the stock issue may be gone. According to reports, this is the result of an investment Microsoft made in April of last year to give priority to chip manufacture at a number of facilities. For the month of March, Xbox Series X|S outsold PlayStation 5 in the UK.
There’s more to life than numbers.
Our fondness for the N64 continues to grow even after all these years, thanks to Nintendo’s new platform, the Switch. When the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack debuted in October 2021, it included N64 (as well as Sega Mega Drive) titles. Aside from that, we’ve seen a lot of progress recently in emulation.
Retro-favorites like Star Fox 64 and the original Zelda game were the foundation of the system’s game catalogue. The company has since released one new game every month, with the most recent additions being Paper Mario, Majora’s Mask, and F-Zero X. The next game in the Expansion Pack will be the original Mario Golf, which will be released on April 15.