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Gaming by the numbers —

Putting the PS5’s 10 million sales in context

In consoles' "race to 10 million," PS5's 248 days is second only to the Wii.

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  • Fig. 1: The PS5 is among the quickest consoles ever to reach 10 million worldwide sales.
  • Fig. 2: Consoles have generally hit 10 million sales more quickly as time has passed and the worldwide player base has increased (though there are exceptions).
  • Fig. 3: The sales paces of the PS5 and PS4 are nearly identical at this point in their life cycles.
  • Fig. 4: The few true PS5 exclusives have failed to sell as well as early Switch exclusives, on a relative basis.

Further Reading

Putting Nintendo Switch’s 10 million sales in context
When Sony announced Wednesday that it had sold 10 million PlayStation 5 consoles to consumers, it trumpeted the system as "the fastest-selling console in Sony Interactive Entertainment history." That statement certainly sounds impressive, but it lacks the specificity we need to judge just how impressive the PS5's sales have been so far (despite component shortages that could make the system hard to find into next year).

To add more context to Sony's announcement, we looked at how quickly some other recent consoles took to sell their first 10 million systems worldwide. While different launch dates and staggered international launches skew some of these comparisons, the data overall shows that the PS5 is selling as fast or faster than some of the most popular consoles of the recent past.

We also looked at newly revealed sales data for PS5 exclusives Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and compared their sales rates to similar early system-sellers on the Switch.

Sales rates for first ~10M sales

Sony

  • PS1 - 7,723 / day (11.5M in 1,489 days - Source)
  • PS2 - 27,066 / day (10.61M in 392 days - Source)
  • PS3 - 25,373 / day (10.53M in 415 days - Source)
  • PS4 - 37,313 / day (10M in 268 days - Source)
  • PS5 - 40,322 / day (10M in 248 days - Source)

Nintendo

  • GameCube - 15,345 / day (10.45M in 681 days - Source)
  • Wii - 41,569 / day (9.27M in 233 days - Source)
  • Wii U - 10,492 / day (10.01M in 954 days - Source)
  • Switch - 35,211 / day (10M in 284 days - Source)

Microsoft

  • Xbox - 15,878 / day (9.4M in 592 days - Source)
  • Xbox 360 - 24,752 / day (10M shipped in 404 days - Source)
  • Xbox One - 28,169 / day (~10M shipped in 355 days - Source)

PlayStation sales milestones

PS5

  • 4.5M - 49 days
  • 7.8M - 139 days
  • 10M - 248 days

PS4

  • 2.1M - 18 days
  • 4.2M - 46 days
  • 5.3M - 85 days
  • 7M - 142 days
  • 10M - 268 days

PS3

  • 1.68M - 50 days
  • 3.61M - 140 days
  • 4.32M - 231 days
  • 5.63M - 323 days
  • 10.53M - 415 days

Software sales rates

Software sales as a percent of total hardware sales, measured nine to 10 months after launch:

PS5

  • 5.6% - Returnal
  • 11% - Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

Switch

Kyle Orland Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

Channel Ars Technica

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