A market study published by Ampere Analysis indicates that Sony sold almost twice as many consoles as Microsoft in 2022, with 18.5 million units of both sold last year alone. This is great news for the PS5, which is expected to remain the world’s most popular console in early 2023.
Digging a little further, the report says that Sony has already sold 30 million units of the PS5, while the Xbox Series X / S account for a total of 18.5 million in total, which represents a difference of 11.5 million consoles more for the Japanese.
According to Ampere Analysis, between the two Microsoft models, the Xbox Series X remains the most desired, as the sales performance of the Xbox Series S during the holiday season was below expectations compared to its more powerful brother.
The forecast is that the difference in PS5 and Xbox sales will increase even more in early 2023, as Sony has been expanding the availability of its console since the end of 2022.
Ampere expects the gap between PlayStation and Xbox unit sales to widen in the first half of 2023, with the Xbox Series X only becoming more consistently available in the second half of the year.
If, on the one hand, Sony has been gaining ground on consoles, Microsoft is doing the same with Xbox Game Pass, which has increased its share when we consider game content and subscriptions in the market from 25.5% in 2021 to 27.3% in 2022, while Sony dropped from 46.3% to 45% last year.
Xbox Game Streaming currently holds 70% of the cloud gaming market, making it one of the most accessible options right now to play games without having to buy a PC or console.
