PS5 will outsell Xbox Series X and S by two to one in 2022, analyst predicts

An industry analyst predicts that the PS5 will outsell the Xbox Series X|S by double, but that still won't make it the best-selling console in the market.

The prediction comes from Piers Harding-Rolls, a games industry specialist at the London-based Ampere Analysis. In a video interview posted to Twitter (as spotted by VGC), Harding-Rolls cited strong demand and restricted supplies of components as the two main reasons for why both Sony and Microsoft had difficulty keeping their new consoles in stock all throughout 2021.

🎮Last year the console market saw strong consumer demand met by pressure on availability of components. How will this evolve in 2022? - @PiersHR Xbox Series: 9m.PlayStation 5: 18mNintendo Switch: 21mWatch the full video here: https://t.co/qE2HwpcTFZ pic.twitter.com/5mqbZeDkIhJanuary 20, 2022

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"The big question is how will that evolve over this coming year? It looks like the availability of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles is going to improve slowly over the year," Harding-Rolls said. "And our expectation is that Sony will outsell Microsoft two-to-one. But actually the biggest selling console in the market is going to be Nintendo Switch at 21 million units, and that will be driven by demand for the new Nintendo Switch OLED."

Ampere predicted that 9 million Xbox Series consoles and 18 million PS5 consoles will be sold in 2022. According to Sony's latest accounting, it had sold 13.4 million PS5 consoles as of September 2021. Moving 18 million in the space of a year would be a step up, yet not a seemingly unreachable goal for the company's new-gen console.

If you're hoping to be one of those millions of new console owners this year, you can hedge your bet by staying tuned to our guide to PS5 restock updates and Xbox Series X restock updates.