PS5 And Xbox Series X Record Sales Show How Easily They’re Fending Off Competition

This week, both Sony and Microsoft reported record sales for their respective consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. They have overcome unwise predictions that dedicated video game consoles were on the way out, when instead, they’re more popular than ever.

Sony is reporting 10 million PS5s sold so far, which is not just faster than any PlayStation in history, but faster than any video game console. And it has done all this while being supply locked, where there are not nearly enough units to meet demand, and it’s unclear how high this might have gone without these shortages.

Microsoft is still behind Sony, but the Xbox Series X/S is outperforming every other Xbox in the lifespan of the brand. Third party estimates put sales between 6-7 million as of last month. Xbox too is mostly supply locked by shortages.

As I explain in the video, this surge is because Sony and Microsoft have effective defeated or absorbed all different types of potential competition to consoles:

• Mobile games remains a huge, successful market, and yet one almost entirely separate from much more expensive, in-depth console games, most of which simply cannot come to mobile platforms. As such, there’s plenty of room in the market for both mobile games and console titles.
• Game streaming services have not altered the market significantly at all. Google Stadia has dramatically underperformed expectations and it’s unclear how long Google will support it. Amazon Luna has barely made a sound. The most significant cloud gaming offering so far is from Xbox itself, and it’s used to supplement its console, not replace it.
• Virtual reality has remained a niche market and has close to zero overlap with traditional console games. While there are fun experiences to be had there, it is an entirely different world of gaming, and like mobile, is entirely separated out from AAA console games. VR has yet to catch on with a more mainstream crowd, despite being on the market for years now, and the medium is still in its infancy.
• PC gaming is not going anywhere and is continuing to thrive, but video game consoles remain cheaper alternatives to expensive gaming PCs while in this generation, retaining a whole lot of horsepower at the same time.

More on all this in my video above.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.