When (if?) it reaches 36 million, that's about 10% above the N64s lifetime sales. I expected a drop from the Xbox One, but nothing like this. 

Microsoft chose this path, mostly. Xbox Series started as the fastest-selling Xbox in history despite still selling less than PS5. But by about some point in 2022, it cratered and Microsoft not only kept up the same day PC releases, but also releasing Xbox games on PS5.

If Microsoft put in a little more effort, Series probably would've cleared 50 million units lifetime. They clearly don't care about consoles, though. 

Even with GTA VI out in 2026, I think it'll mostly be played by current Series owners or people who get one used. Microsoft clearly is having few of them made. 

35 million seems inevitable, but maybe not 36 million units. 

Yeah, I've mentioned this before as well, the push for Gamepass to simultaneously be a system-seller for the Xbox machines and a service available on other platforms made no sense to begin with. Their entire approach was a shot in the foot waiting to happen, at least as far as hardware is concerned. It really makes me wonder what their thinking and strategy is ahead of the next generation. 

I do wonder how the AI boom will impact Microsoft plans to launch new PC console hybrid hardware the coming years, it was already before the price spike on RAM expected to be incredibly expensive, now that figure will balloon even more upwards, which would logically lead to even less sales potential for that new hardware. The AI boom may turn that hardware from something niche to something that may not even be worth putting on the market from a sales perspective.

I do think Microsoft have no viable path forwards when it comes to gaming hardware, their best bet is to hope cloud gaming becomes the norm faster than the industry expects.

X|S, outside of the US, is barely a thing. I personally don't think that we're looking at a 50:50 split anymore, not even close.

I don't see X|S sitting above +30m, either, and am very much convinced by KeplerL2's claim that X|S shipments are "even worse than I thought".

When I had prepared GPT with various prompts to, at first, construct the framework of how X|S shipment data could be calculated, it was even GPT itself that, calculated with revenue data and price hikes, that found X|S to be more likely sitting around 29 million units shipped in the 'optimistic scenario'.

I know that AI advice has to be taken cautiosly. But I took every effort I could to prepare GPT to run its the final equation/estimation.

X|S, outside of the US, in my mind, just can't be sitting at 17m units sold-through. Europe basically rejected X|S for 3 years straight now, and wether in Oceania nor Asia it's a thing.

X|S, throughout 2025, is barely even selling 2.5m units in total.

I don't think it's plausible that it has sold-through (!) ~15m units since June '23, when Microsoft showed "21+ million units shipped" at a presentation in Brazil, when ONE of that year is 2025 - which won't even reach 2.5m units sold-through, leaving 12.5m units sold-through in 1 ½ years (July '23 until December '24).

Things to note, the 21+ million units shipped in that presentation on June 28th-29th 2023 is likely quoting an internal number from their previous fiscal quarter. I.E it will be 21+ million shipped as of March 31st 2023. VGChartz has the XS selling through 21.2m by the end of March 2023, I'd say based on this it's very likely to be overtracked as of that date. But this is speculation on the actual date of the 21+ million shipped number, even though the end of the previous quarter seems the most obvious answer.

The 100m+ AMD next-gen chip shipments announcement is almost entirely useless because it's not dated at when in the quarter they passed 100m shipments, nor do we know how long between AMD counting a shipment of the chip would that chip be used in manufacturing and the final console be shipped out.

I'd certainly say it's more likely than not that the Xbox is overtracked, but it'll still be over 30m. There's no way they shipped less than 9m over the 33 months following that 21m+ figure. That's just 272k a month average, and sales weren't completely in the toilet yet in 2023. Sell-through will also be a lot closer to shipped numbers for Xbox, for many periods over the last couple of years they've barely kept the things stocked.

USA/Japan estimates should be fairly accurate, I doubt there's a massive discrepancy in Europe either. If Xbox is overtracked then most of it will be from RoW and Latin America. RoW numbers are quite high.

Given the estimates X|S was selling through in 2023, it wouldn't really make a huge difference if we took March or June as the month of their 21m figure.

But ... I'd claim that they wouldn't put up their last fiscal quarter number up there, but rather an adjusted one, since their presentation was in June, so almost at the end of their next fiscal quarter already.

Regardless though, that would mean X|S would have shipped at least 13m units since either April or July 2023 up until November 2025, which we can scrap right away, because that would be a 0 deviation between sell-through:shipments.

But more likely 16-17m units shipped in either 28 or 31 months.

And since we're estimating roughly 2.5m units sell-through for 2025, this would leave a maximum of roughly 14m units shipped since April '23 (or July '23) up until December 2024.

Which, at least to my estimations, just can't be possible, given the reported declines.

Personally, in support with the numbers KeplerL2 had implied, I just don't see X|S having sold-through 34m units as of November 2025, when in 2025 they're barely even reaching 2.5m units sell-through in 12 months.

I am not throwing jabs at VGChartz here, because we don't get anything from Microsoft, at all.

I'm just disagreeing. But can't proof it, either.

In my personal calculations, I have X|S at 28.2m units shipped as of October 2025. GPT estimated 29m units in its 'optimistic scenario'.

"But more likely 16-17m units shipped in either 28 or 31 months."

The gap between Xbox shipped and sold-through will be very small with how slow they are selling and how little they have been stocking. We've regularly seen Xbox have stock issues over the last couple of years despite terrible sales. The gap between sell through and shipped is probably well under 1m for Xbox series.

28.2m shipped as of October 2025 just makes no sense whatsoever. We have the percentage drops to know that 2023 was a lot better than 2024 which was a lot better than 2025.

Given what we know from MS reported hardware revenue and the YoY drops reported by Circana, GFK etc, to only have done ~7m in 2.5 years since the 21m+ presentation is inconceivable.

2025 is bad enough to only ship around 2.5m units, 2024 and 2023 were MUCH better by comparison.

Quick question here:

I had read it had been figured out years ago that Microsoft's hardware revenue does not just include revenue from consoles being shipped, but also revenue coming accessoires being sold. 

Are you taking that into account?

Xbox Series has seen a slight adjustment upward by 10k, putting it now at 34.1m, or 1.9m from the 36m threshold.

It has also now surpassed the lifetime sales of the Megadrive/Genesis:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/466600/xbox-series-outsells-sega-genesis-mega-drive/