The Switch has proven popular since its release in 2017 and is close to breaking the sales record of the Wii, Nintendo's best-selling in-home console. The PlayStation 5, by contrast, has been in high demand since its launch a year ago but has faced widespread shortages that have forced many fans to wait for restocks to have a chance at buying the system.
Several factors likely contribute to the PlayStation 5's recent bump in sales. The limited games available at the console's release could help explain why the console lagged behind the Switch until now. Relatively few new games launched with the PS5, giving less incentive for consumers to buy the system. High-profile games like Deathloop, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Returnal have changed that in recent months, and likely made the PlayStation 5 a more attractive purchase. The Switch, meanwhile, recently released the Switch OLED, a new model that paradoxically may have hurt the console's sales. Reports have suggested that the Switch OLED suffers from the same supply shortages as the PS5, preventing customers from purchasing the system for themselves.
The new sales figures come from the NPD Group's Mat Piscatella on Twitter, who released a great deal of information on consumer spending in the video game industry for the month of September. In his thread, he mentions that "November 2018 was the last month a platform other than Nintendo Switch led the market in unit sales (PlayStation 4)." Although the PlayStation 5 has overtaken the Switch for one-month sales, Nintendo is still the leader for total console sales in 2021.
While the Switch has stayed ahead of the PS5 so far, these latest figures don't mark the first time that the PlayStation 5 has broken sales records. As Piscatella reports that video game hardware sales have gone up 43% in the last year, it appears that the PS5 will continue to trend upwards for the foreseeable future. The Switch will likely have a much less dominant position moving forward, no matter how sales for each individual month turn out.
Of course, the fact that the Switch is more than four years old goes a long way toward explaining how its streak got snapped. The Switch OLED clearly isn't a big enough make it a must-have purchase for many consumers, and unless a bigger surprise comes around like the rumors of a 4K Switch update, it's unlikely that the PlayStation 5 will fall back into second place any time soon.
Source: Mat Piscatella/Twitter
