Microsoft has reportedly sold over 21 million Xbox Series X/S units since launch

Microsoft used to offer updates on unit sales for its Xbox consoles during its quarterly financial reports. However, the company has not done that for quite some time. Indeed, since the Xbox Series X and S consoles first launched in November 2020, the company has never issued specific sales numbers for these products.

In his annual letter on LinkedIn in October 2022, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated only that " We’ve sold more Xbox Series S and Series X consoles life-to-date than any previous generation of Xbox."

However, it looks like Microsoft relaxed that rule a bit during an ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program presentation at the recent BIG Festival in Brazil. John Welfare on Twitter, who credits @LucasTaves for this info, posted a picture from that Microsoft presentation. It shows that Microsoft has sold over 21 million combined Xbox Series X and S consoles since the launch. That number goes up to over 71 million units if the older Xbox One console sales are added.

By contrast, Sony stated in its latest financial report in late April that sales of its PlayStation 5 console had reached 38.4 million units since it launched in November of 2020. The Nintendo Switch, which launched much earlier in March 2017, has sold over 125 million total units as of March 2023.

One interesting tidbit of info from that same Microsoft presentation slide is that 48 percent of sales of its cheaper Xbox Series S console came from people who were all new to the Xbox game platform. That may indicate a good strategy for Microsoft as it allows new Xbox fans to join up without having to pay a ton of money while still getting access to all the same games as the more expensive Xbox Series X console.

More slides from that same presentation from Twitter user @IdleSloth show that Microsoft claims there are 248.6 million active Windows gaming PCs, along with 168.3 million monthly Windows store visitors, which is supposed to be 3 percent higher in paid unique users.