Yeah growing up (In Australia) I knew about as many N64 owners as PS1 owners, and about as many Xbox owners as PS2 owners. Actually knew a fair few Wii U owners too despite the thing selling next to nothing. Small sample size + possibly a regional thing.

The Wii U definitely felt super unpopular for me. I literally only met one acquaintance who owned one outside of me. The other times I saw a Wii U was at my school lounge and a a restaurant arcade. It was really quite impressive tbh how unpopular the console was and felt at the time. No matter how unpopular a console was I always seen at least a few people own it no matter what console it was the the big 3, up until the Wii U.

But now thinking about it, the PS Vita felt completely non-existent from my perspective. Made sense though it sold 3 TIMES LESS than the Wii U here in the U.S, it was embarrassingly low to sell 3 times less than a huge failure that was the Wii U especially for a handheld which should naturally be better at selling than home consoles.

Not gonna lie too I felt like the 3DS was way less popular than how much it sold. 75 Million seems like a crazy high number for me for a console that I felt like barely anyone talked about like that, and I didn't see many people own them even kids, and on the internet I felt like the 3DS felt under the radar the entire generation with not much hype surrounding it. Stuff like the GBA felt way more popular but only sold 6M more which is crazy to me.

I think I felt this way mainly because the 3DS while it sold alot, I felt like the people who brought it didn't play it that much and ended up being a pretty bug dust collector for a good amount of people. The low software attach rate for the 3DS supports this idea. From what I've seen the only people I've seen get the 3DS were little kids who got over it really quickly once they got an IPad. I also feel like since the 3DS was so cheap for most of its life to the point where you had a bunch of more casual gamers who purchased it as an impulse buy instead of a console they truly cared about, just to play 1 or 2 games they were interested in but not really dedicate that much time towards it, plus the amount of the same people who brought multiple different models probably inflated the sales as well.

Does the ps5 count? People act like it is DoA but globally it will easily break 100 million.

Xbox One sold a lot less than I thought it would. At first I believed I could even pass the 360.

Where I live the DS didn't really seem any more popular than the Game Boy or GBA, so was a little suprised when I first found out how much more it sold. It's also kind of hard to believe the Switch is closing in on the PS2 because literally everyone had one of those. Well except me.

Gameboy sales seem very impressive and then you realize that Gameboy Ccolor sales are rolled into them and the perception changes slightly.

Snes with how fondly remembered it was and how much it is a greaf system then to find out it sold less then the nes

As a kid I was always under the impression that the N64 and gamecube were as popular as the playstation consoles. I knew at least 3 different friends that owned a gamecube and N64 along with a playstation 1,2 console. Also met some people who said they owned them.

I always heard people talk about them and I would see the games and magazines like Nintendo power in the stores. So I thought they were very popular back in the day.

You can Imagine my surprise when I got on the internet years later and discovered the sales numbers for those consoles.

Those people must be referring to software and the number of games (especially until recently) that you could just play on a PS4, let alone PC and other consoles. 

The biggest problem on supposed like of PS5s out there was scalping or if someone didn't know more than a few people IRL who had one. 

The floor for PS5 even shortly into its life was around PS3 sales. And pretty early on it was pretty clear it would surpass PS1. At the moment, surpassing PS4 is still on the table even if it's not the most likely.