Console history: six gaming generations

Name: Console history: six gaming generations
Uploaded: 2026-10-17T15:08:10Z
Description: From Game Boy to PS5: six handheld and home-console families across nearly three decades.

From Game Boy to PS5: six handheld and home-console families across nearly three decades.

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About this chart

Lifetime hardware shipments · millions worldwide · 31 March 1998–2026 · 78 observations; dates vary by console

Sources, method and credits

Nintendo / Sony IR. Game Boy starts at 64.42M in 1998, not zero. Nintendo totals reconstructed from published lifetime and annual/grouped figures; Sony totals sum rounded annual sell-in. Annual retains source rounding adjustments. Different launch dates; visual interpolation between observations. Lines end at their last reported date: Game Boy 2014, PS4 2022, DS/Wii 2023. No missing values replaced by zero or extended to 2026. Selected history, not an exhaustive ranking; excludes PS1/PS2 production shipments, partial PS3/Xbox 360 history and Switch 2. Game Boy includes Color; Switch includes Lite/OLED. See source notes for definitions and image credits.

Manufacturer public financial disclosures; Nintendo / Sony credited. Photos: Evan-Amos, public domain (Game Boy, DS, Wii, PS4, Switch); Howardcorn33, CC0 1.0 (PS5). Individual image/source links in source notes.

Original data source