The World's Best-Selling Video Game Consoles

On December 3, 1994, Sony released its first PlayStation, a CD-ROM-based home console, following a failed disc drive prototype planned for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Today, the PlayStation's successor is still the best-selling home console with 160 million units shipped. Sony's former collaboration partner has become one its main rival in the console field - and its Switch hybrid handheld console is the only one with the potential to topple the PlayStation 2 in terms of shipped consoles, standing at 146 million units sold per Nintendo's latest financial results.

Nintendo and Sony have dominated the gaming landscape for the past two and a half decades. The former has two consoles in the top 8 and the latter three in the top 4 alone. As of Sony's last earnings results, the PlayStation 5 has officially trumped Nintendo's Entertainment System and entered the top 8 of the most popular video game consoles with a total of 65.4 million units sold since it was brought to market in late 2020. Nintendo's Switch and Sony's Playstation 5 are the only consoles in the top 8 that are still in production.

While its competitors Sony and Microsoft have already moved on to the next console generation in 2020, Nintendo held out on a next-gen version of its hybrid handheld, even though rumors about the announcement of a Switch 2 have been circulating for some time. After the release of the Japanese company's financial results for its fiscal year 2024, Nintendo's president offered some clarification on the future of the game maker's handheld console on Twitter.

According to Shuntarō Furukawa, the company will share official information on the next-gen Switch in the current fiscal year, which runs until the end of March 2025. The exact contents of this upcoming announcement are, as of now, unknown. What seems clear, however, is that the Switch taking the top spot is entirely dependent on the launch date of its successor.