The PlayStation 5 Has Already Beaten The Wii U's Lifetime Sales

Based on its sales figures, you’d be led to believe that everyone and their grandma has managed to nab themselves a PS5 by now. Of course, we all know that isn’t actually the case - it’s still incredibly difficult to find stock of them anywhere, that isn’t from someone reselling at some god-awful inflated price, that is. Even so, there’s no doubt it is selling well, somewhere, to someone - it’s the fastest selling PlayStation console of all time. 

On the other hand, we have the poor Wii U. Dear lord, what a sad little life, Wii U. I say that like I don’t personally still own one in the year 2022, and stand by the fact that it was actually really good, with some amazing exclusives. Unfortunately, one diehard Nintendo fan’s opinion was never going to change the sales numbers - it’s no secret that it sold very poorly, indeed. So poorly, in fact, that its entire lifetime sales have already been surpassed by the PS5. It released over nine years ago, by the way. As opposed to, you know, just over a year ago. Ouch. 

To be exact, the Wii U, which launched in 2012, sold 13.56 million units as of 31 December 2019, and the PS5, which launched in 2020, sold 17.3 million units as of 31 December 2021. And yes, I know there’s two years between those two figures, but I promise you that there were not four million people who went out and bought a Wii U in that time, especially when the Switch was already on the scene. 

Again, this is probably less an accolade of Sony, and more of another sad fact about Nintendo’s previous-gen console. It’s unlikely Nintendo themselves will be even remotely phased by this, though - almost five years on from the Switch’s release, it’s still doing very well. In Japan last year, it sold 5.3 million units, as opposed to the PS5’s 942k units. Onwards and upwards, eh?