PlayStation 5 reaches humiliating new sales milestone

The PlayStation 5's latest sales milestone rubs salt in the console war-shaped wound ever further, as it marks a humiliating moment that shows quite how far Sony's main rival has fallen over the last few years.

The battle between PlayStation and Xbox has remained one of the dominant conversations in the gaming world for nearly over two decades, as the original Xbox's release in 2001 saw a new contender enter the field to challenge the existing juggernauts.

While it did little to match the overwhelming dominance of the PlayStation 2, Microsoft came back swinging with the release of the Xbox 360 which – despite a number of hardware related controversies – remained the go-to home console for most gamers until the end of the generation.

However, it was almost from the moment that the Xbox One was revealed in May 2021 that the tides started to turn, as players overwhelmingly favored the PlayStation 4 in a move that has continued ever since with the release of the PS5 in 2020.

Now, five years into the current console generation, Sony has revealed marked a humiliating milestone for their primary console as the PlayStation 5 has now officially sold more than every Xbox console ever released, as per IGN.

Sony's PlayStation 5 has now sold more units than every Xbox console ever released (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

The PS5 is now up to a jaw-dropping 84.2 million total sales across its lifespan after 3.9 million units were delivered across the last three month period, which is surprisingly an 100,000 increase compared to the same quarter in 2024.

This means that it has finally overtaken the last registered sales update for the Xbox 360, which Microsoft claimed had sold more than 84 million units in June 2014, although it's unclear whether the final figure is any different to this as this was purely consoles sold to retail stores, and the 360 wasn't discontinued until two years after that update.

Currently the PS5 still sits behind the PS2, PS3, and PS4 when it comes to total sales, with the former almost doubling the current generation console's recent milestone by the end of its lifespan.

The PS5 has finally overtaken the incredibly successful Xbox 360, silencing claims of a console war (David Paul Morris/Getty Images)

Additionally, a number of Nintendo consoles including the Game Boy, DS, Wii, and Switch are ahead of the PlayStation 5 right now.

Comparatively, the PS5 is still lagging behind its predecessor when tracking sales across the opening five-year period, with the PS4 achieving 86.1 million units, but Sony has claimed that the current console is its 'most financially successful ever', likely due to the higher price point.

We're probably still a few years at least away from the next PlayStation console, but despite intriguing rumors regarding the form that Xbox's next output will take, this sales update will likely give Sony confidence that it'll remain on top when it comes to the console war for the foreseeable future.