PlayStation 5 vs Xbox Series X: Data reveals the most popular console

Published: January 10, 2021

In November 2020, the two console giants, both PlayStation and Xbox, went head-to-head with the launch of their new next-gen consoles - PS5 and Xbox Series X. The excitement surrounding these two consoles was enormous, and they both ended up selling millions of units only within their first month of launch.

So out of the two rival brands, who actually won? Who had the most sales? Who won the "console war"? These are some questions we wanted to know, so we at GamingSmart decided to do some extensive research.

After analyzing market share, unit sales, and online search data, we found some answers to these very intriguing questions. Our most prominent findings are featured in this report - including which console is the overall most popular.

PlayStation vs Xbox - one clear winner

Based on current market share data, Sony's Playstation comes out as the most popular gaming console by taking 65.05% of the global console market share.

According to market share data, the PlayStation 5 takes a clear win in popularity over the Xbox Series X/S.

Despite PlayStation's clear victory, Xbox has performed noticeably better than in previous years. In 2018, the Xbox consoles had only 25.29% of the gaming console market. In 2019 they did far better with 37.41%. In 2020, Xbox had managed to take an average of 39.29% of the console market, with December of 2020 reporting 34.94% market share for Xbox. Xbox's numbers are only expected to grow as we are going into 2021. Even though Xbox is behind in the race, their numbers do seem to be climbing more and more every year.

Unit sales comparison

It's clear from the market share data that the PS5 sold far more units than the XSX did. According to estimates, the PS5 sold a little over 2 million more units than its counterpart. In total, the PS5 has sold roughly 4.48 million units, whereas the Xbox Series X/S has only sold around 2.4 million.

Breakdown of worldwide console popularity

Just like people have their own favorite consoles, countries have their favorites as well. Here is a graphic which maps the console preferences of almost every country:

Out of the 167 examined countries, only 12 of them had Xbox as their favorite gaming console. Those countries include the United States, Mexico, China, Hungary, Afghanistan, Belarus, Belize, Bermuda, Grenada, Jamaica, Liberia and Slovenia.

Raw data from select countries:

Country	Favorite console	PlayStation Market Share	Xbox Market Share
United States	Xbox	49.80%	50.18%
United Kingdom	PlayStation	54.61%	45.39%
Canada	PlayStation	53.51%	46.49%
Japan	PlayStation	98.49%	1.51%
Mexico	Xbox	37.73%	62.27%
Australia	PlayStation	57.77%	42.22%
Germany	PlayStation	80.60%	19.40%
India	PlayStation	91.54%	8.46%
Brazil	PlayStation	57.86%	43.32%
Sweden	PlayStation	70.78%	29.22%

Sources

StatCounter

VGChartz

Google Trends

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