The PlayStation 4 was until now the third best-selling console in video game history. It is dethroned at the start of the year by Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch.
La PlayStation 4 // Source : Nikita Kachanovsky via Unsplash
Since the release of the PlayStation 5, Sony has sold over 32 million models. The console is therefore less successful than the PlayStation 4, which has sold nearly 120 million copies in total. If that was enough to lift it to third place on the podium of the best-selling video game consoles of all time, this is no longer the case. It was overtaken this year by the Nintendo Switch, which sold 122.55 million copies until 2023.
The Nintendo Switch moves up the rankings
In any case, this is revealed by Nintendo’s financial results report for 2022, relayed by Engadget. We learn that during the last nine months of 2022, no less than 14.91 million Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED were sold worldwide.
Now, the ranking remains dominated by Sony’s PlayStation 2 released in 2002, with more than 155 million copies sold. The second position goes to another iconic Nintendo console, the DS. The PlayStation 4 therefore finds itself fourth, ahead of the Game Boy, still from Nintendo. If the Switch wants to overtake the first console in the ranking, it lacks around 33 million copies, while the console is getting old. The classic model was released on March 3, 2017, which is almost six years ago.
Left half of the Nintendo Switch OLED // Source: Anthony Wonner – Aroged
Regarding the French market more specifically, we learned a few weeks ago that the Nintendo Switch has become the best-selling console on the market. With more than 7 million copies sold, it dethroned the Wii, which was from the same manufacturer.
Halftone results
If these results make it possible to move the console to third place among the best-selling models of all time, they are less compared to the year 2021. That year, Nintendo was not singing for the first time since these are nearly 19 million units that had passed. The result: sales down 5.6% for the financial year that ended last March. In its report, Nintendo attributes the decline in console sales to the shortage of semiconductors which led to a lack of consoles, which also explains a drop in the number of games sold.
The Nintendo Switch dock // Source: Anthony Wonner – Aroged
As our English-speaking colleagues point out, “game sales also fell by 4% over the same period” and although the latest Pokémon games (Scarlet and Purple) sold more than 20 million units, they did not were not enough to compensate for the loss. However, the arrival of the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom scheduled for May or the release of the animated film adapted from the Super Mario Bros series could boost game sales.
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