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Sony has sold 50 million PS5 consoles over three years

It's estimated to have outsold the Xbox Series X and S by three to one this year.

Aaron Souppouris/Engadget

The PlayStation 5 has officially hit the 50 million sales milestone, Sony confirmed in a blog post. That's an impressive figure, considering the litany of supply chain issues that kept PS5s in limited supply after its November 2020 launch. And notably, the PS5 manage to reach 50 million sales just a week longer than it took the PlayStation 4, which wasn't bogged down by as many supply chain issues or a worldwide pandemic.

Sony has also outsold the Xbox Series X and S by almost three to one this year, the Financial Times reports, based on data from Ampere Analysis. While Microsoft doesn't release official Xbox sales numbers (you can take a wild guess as to why), Ampere estimated that Microsoft sold 7.6 million next-gen systems this year (a 15 percent drop from 2022), while Sony's sales exploded by 65 percent to reach 22.5 million units sold.

It's not hard to see why the PS5 is in more demand: Sony has pumped out far more must-have games this generation (including the recent Spider-Man 2, as well as anticipated sequels like God of War Ragnarok), while Microsoft has stumbled with its more high profile releases, like Halo Infinite and Redfall. But it could just be that Microsoft has a different goal. It's far more focused on pushing subscriptions to Xbox Game Pass, which also allows players to stream titles over the cloud and play on PC with its ultimate tier.