Microsoft Has Reportedly Sold Just 21 Million Xbox Series X and S Consoles

News
By Mark Tyson
published

Rare glimpse of official figures shows latest Xbox consoles trailing the PS5 (38.4m) and Switch (126.6m).

Xbox Porsche edition
(Image credit: Xbox)

Apparently, there have been over 21 million Xbox Series X and Series S consoles sold by Microsoft, since launch. A slide reported to have been shared by Microsoft, at the ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program in Brazil, has provided this number. That is a lot of consoles, but the number isn't quite as impressive when compared to the sales numbers from console rivals Sony and Nintendo.  

Microsoft has been tight-lipped regarding sales figures for Xbox consoles for nearly a decade. It has been speculated that management decided to hide console unit sales by getting its accountants to publicly weigh Microsoft’s Xbox business in terms of Xbox Live and Game Pass subscriptions. This provides optics than showing the Xbox console unit numbers obviously lagging rivals.

Another revelation concerns the numbers of Xbox One family consoles sold in their lifetime. Remember, it has been so long since we saw Xbox hardware unit sales from Microsoft that it extends to the previous generation. Doing some trivial math, we see that there were 58 million Xbox One consoles sold during its era. Clearly, the Xbox Series X / S still have a long way to go to reach such numbers. To get a good handle on this data, we think a chart is called for.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Platform

Launch date

Units sold (m)

Xbox One

Nov 2013

58

Xbox Series X / S

Nov 2020

21

Sony PS4

Nov 2013

117.2

Sony PS5

Nov 2020

38.4

Nintendo Switch

Mar 2017

125.6

Note that with the figures above we have tried to source the latest official totals. You can see the Xbox figures that have come from the headlining Microsoft slide at the top. The latest PlayStation 5 and Switch console hardware sales figures come from numbers shared this March, so will be a little out of date by now.

One other interesting morsel from the Microsoft slide concerns the cheaper Xbox Series S. At launch, we contrasted Microsoft’s strategy of launching the Series S with Sony’s. The slide’s assertion that 48% of Series S players are new to Xbox paints it as quite a success. That is a good conversion figure, and that console’s pricing takes it much further into the impulse buying zone than its bigger brother (or Sony’s consoles).

In the current battle royale between the Xbox Series and Sony PS5 consoles, it looks likely that Sony could pull ahead a bit more. Sony was particularly badly affected during the peak pandemic years, with the chip crunch and big stay-at-home demand. However, that period appears to be behind us now and Sony is predicting another 19 million PS5 consoles will be sold by its financial year end (March 31, 2024).

Healthy PC Gaming Market

Last but not least, another slide from the ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program showed some figures for PC gaming. Yes, PCs continue to be a hugely important gaming market with “248.6m active Windows gaming PCs,” according to Microsoft.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
Freelance News Writer

Mark Tyson is a Freelance News Writer at Tom's Hardware US. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    XB1 : PS4 = 58 : 117.2 = 1 : 2.0206896551724137931034482758621
    XSX|S : PS5 = 21 : 38.4 = 1 : 1.8285714285714285714285714285714

    So MS is doing better than the last generation.

    Nintendo is a weird outlier since the Nintendo Switch comes off the failure of the WiiU and straddles two console generations.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    So MS is doing better than the last generation.

    Since the numbers Tom's grabs are up to March of this year, that's debatable since a lot of people just gave up on getting a PS5 between 2021-2022 due to the continued supply/demand issues. The XBX|S could be seen back in stock both in store and online (at MSRP pricing) long before the PS5. In fact, I didn't even get the option to buy my PS5 until last November when finally getting an Amazon Prime invite to do so after many months of waiting (as referenced in the article on supply vs. demand).

    Now who are those who gave up? Well just in my little anecdotal world, two of my friend's teenage sons who gave up trying to get one and just decided to build a gaming PC (when GPUs were long back in stock mind you). Neither wanted an Xbox, and based on conversations with them, there were a lot who just gave up on a PS5 between 2021-2022. Now many did eventually get one like I did at some point, but many did NOT.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    MS knows XB is just a prebuilt PC w/ a locked down store.


    this is why they stopped really doing exclusives.

    those exclusives are why you buy consoles.

    just ask Sony.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    hotaru251 said:
    those exclusives are why you buy consoles. just ask Sony.

    Heh. Well there are many who say that's just not true...that nobody buys a console just for the exclusives. I clearly remember when the first XB came out in 2001 and Halo was a launch exclusive (later available on PC). Anyone who denies that didn't help move XB sales is in full denial.

    Now on to the Playstation, I chose it due to several exclusives including Gran Turismo, and have had every iteration since the PS2 (and both the original and updated versions each of the PS3 and PS4). Of course Microsoft didn't help themselves when later games like the Halo series were available on PC/Steam.

    Now does that mean Sony took sales from the PC/XB gamer? Certainly not. But Sony did lock in their core customer base with each new console with exclusives.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    When the consoles all perform about the same exclusivity is definitely what pushes the purchase one way or another for most people. The push that got me to buy my original Xbox was most certainly Halo being made exclusive. At the time I didn't mind it because I didn't have anything other than a Dreamcast and there were several titles I wanted to play.

    I still don't mind first party exclusives much though I think Sony is leaving a lot of money on the table by punting PC ports so far out. It's the third party exclusives which I find to be one of, if not, the worst things on gaming right now. It really ramped up during the 360/PS3 era with MS paying for cod exclusivity. Now it basically anything that can be monetized exclusivity wise will be monetized.

    I think something people tend to forget is that even though MS "won" the 360 era they didn't really. They won North America and that was pretty much it. Then they had the pile on lead in to the Xbox One launch combined with the extra cost of the kinect and that was the end of that.

    Exclusives likely won't bring a lot of people to Xbox at this point because of the way MS treats PC. I know I only got my Xbox One S because it cost $50 more than the cheapest good 4k blu-ray player at the time. I wouldn't be surprised this generation if the gap grew even more. There's a shot if MS times things right with whatever the next generation is due to upgrade cycles and the current stupid cost of video cards.
    Reply
  • Elusive Ruse
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    XB1 : PS4 = 58 : 117.2 = 1 : 2.0206896551724137931034482758621
    XSX|S : PS5 = 21 : 38.4 = 1 : 1.8285714285714285714285714285714

    So MS is doing better than the last generation.

    Nintendo is a weird outlier since the Nintendo Switch comes off the failure of the WiiU and straddles two console generations.
    That math doesn't make sense, Xbox S is no competition for PS5 that's why it's dirt cheap. It's a glorified Nvidia Shield.
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Elusive Ruse said:
    That math doesn't make sense, Xbox S is no competition for PS5 that's why it's dirt cheap. It's a glorified Nvidia Shield.
    Nobody is stating that the XSS is competitive with the PS5 in terms of hardware power.

    But the XSX & XSS are part of the same generation and operate the same games on two different code paths.

    So they are part of the same lineage.

    MS took a different path for competition by having a gimped Console & a normally powerful Console.

    Sony just went with pure power.

    At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, Sony is still clobbering MS.

    Even with XSS & XSX sales combined.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    And those numbers are just fine with Microsoft. They need to look weaker than Nintendo and especially Sony to get their Activision deal passed.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Most of me is surprised Microsoft doesn't just give the consoles away with a 36 month contract to XBOX Game Pass Ultimate ($15/month).
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Most of me is surprised Microsoft doesn't just give the consoles away with a 36 month contract to XBOX Game Pass Ultimate ($15/month).
    Microsoft is still a public corp so this is the best they're gonna do: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-all-access
    Reply