Consoles That You Felt Like Sold More or Less Than They Actually did

[Wman1996]

curl-6 said:

It still shocks me that the Xbox One sold almost as much as the NES.

I only knew one person who had one, but more than that, it seemed to have almost zero cultural impact as there weren't really any games on it that made a lasting impression that weren't also on PS4.

And it's ahead of Xbox Series X/S globally and will probably be that way in the end.

I agree with the surprise of the older systems selling a lot less than you would guess (NES, Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES, etc) but the gaming market in consoles and overall was actually smaller back then than we often think. 

Consoles today are selling more than a good amount of gaming history, but PC and mobile absolutely destroy consoles in revenue and profits. 

Hardware sales peaked with the 7th Generation (3 core home consoles, 2 core handhelds) and I don't think they'll ever sell close to it again. The 7th Generation was the final generation to offer a mountain of different experiences in comparison to PC and mobile. Nintendo has pretty much kept that different feeling alive with the 3DS, Wii U, and Switch. But Xbox One/Series and PS4/PS5? They feel way closer to PCs than previous generations of those console lines. And I didn't forget PS Vita, which slightly outsold Wii U. But it had worse first-party games, and was probably less unique than Wii U. 

DS: 154.9

Wii: 101.64

PS3: 87.41

360: 85.8

PSP: 81.09

Total: 510.84