Whether it’s your sweaty brother and his PC setup, your annoying younger sister and her Nintendo Switch, your parents remembering Pac-Man coming to the nearest arcade or Grandpa recalling Pong, video games have been around long enough now that it’s common ground for many.
Common ground doesn’t mean that every person you know is most likely a hard core gamer, just more so they have an experience or two related to a game.
Your co-worker maybe hasn’t played a video game in years, but if the topic arises they may recall playing a game as a kid where the “blue hedgehog runs fast.”
Love them, hate them or are impartial to them, chances are just about everyone you know has experienced a video game.
With these experiences common, one can only imagine how standard it is to find a video game console in any random home you may enter. (Please don’t do this without the homeowners permission.)
Per Ahmed Sherif of Statista, “At least 53 percent of U.S. households report to owning at least one video game console.”
Chances are high that you, dear reader, contribute to such a statistic, and if you don’t your neighbor likely does.
This isn’t the 1980’s or early 90’s.
Video games are cool now, mainstream even, you can discuss them openly without fear, even the jocks and skaters are in on it. (Mostly)
So with that being said, it was particularly interesting to see how many of the most popular consoles we owned when Culture Crave posted the highest selling game consoles.
These consoles span from 1989 (Game Boy) to current day (Nintendo Switch), providing a lot of gaming history in between.
With the PlayStation 2 (2000) paving the way at 160 million units sold, recency doesn’t always translate to most popular.
In fact outside of the Nintendo Switch, none of the “current gen” video game consoles made the list as of now.
Out of those, being the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X & S, the PS5 finds itself closest to cracking the top ten, practically 4 years into it’s life span.
Culture Crave reports that the PlayStation 5 is currently reported at 65.5 million units sold, still 16 million units behind the Game Boy Advance.
Ironically the PS5 is the only current Sony home console to not make the top ten (not counting the PlayStation Portable) as the PlayStation (6th), PS2 (1st), PS3 (8th) and PS4 (5th) all sit comfortably in the top ten.
Microsoft and Xbox only take up one slot at #9 with 2005’s Xbox 360.
Nintendo owns the rest of the shares boasting not one, not two, but three portable handheld devices, 4 if you count the Switch and it’s…. switchability.
The Game Boy/ Game Boy Color sit 4th combining for 118.6 million units sold.
It’s predecessor, the Game Boy Advance is 10th with 81.5 million.
And the follow up to the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo DS was the closest challenger to the PlayStation 2 with 154 million units purchased.
For home console usage, Nintendo hasn’t done too shabby with both the Switch (3rd) and the Nintendo Wii, the 2006 must have console for families, hanging out in 7th with 101.6 million sold.
Whatever your playing style, whatever your console preference, chances are high you had one of these consoles in your home, maybe even multiple.
Let us know in the comments below, which of these you owned at one point or still do.
