As both Nintendo and Sony announce massive sales numbers for their consoles, with the Switch currently at 89 million consoles sold and the PlayStation 5 at 10 million consoles sold, it can be easy to forget that neither system has been the easiest to find lately. While the Nintendo Switch has been more readily available this year, the PlayStation 5 has been almost impossible to locate for an entire year now.
This is actually quite common in the video game industry, though, as fans are almost always ravenous for new hardware by the time it launches. For a number of reasons, console developers are rarely able to meet demand perfectly in the first few months. But sometimes things can become extreme even for fans that are used to it.
7 Xbox 360 Was Sold Out Everywhere Except Japan
The Xbox 360 was Microsoft’s proper debut into gaming. Their first attempt with the Xbox was a nice shot, backed up by unique IP that couldn’t be found anywhere else. But the Xbox 360 became the first console to bring high-definition graphics to fans, and they couldn’t get enough of it.
Microsoft started making the consoles a scant two months before launch, and as a result, they were sold out everywhere except Japan for months. Of course, that didn’t stop the system from moving ten million in less than a year.
6 PlayStation 2 Couldn't Meet Demand After Running Into Supply Problems
PlayStation 2 continued what Sony’s original PlayStation console started. Sony was bringing video games into the mainstream, and that meant more people all over the world playing it than the usual kids.
But after months of building up an incredible amount of hype, the company very soon ran into a reality check of being unable to have the supply to meet the demand. The initial launch quantities were far fewer than expected, and to make matters worse people were buying and scalping the consoles online for vastly increased prices.
5 PlayStation 4 Had Sufficient Supply But Fans Still Couldn't Find It On Store Shelves
Sony did its best to properly satisfy demand with the PlayStation 4, having seen what could happen if consumers couldn’t get their hands on the product. To their credit, they did as good a job as they could have, but that didn’t stop the system from selling out. By launch, fans were hungry for a new console as the last PlayStation was seven years prior.
Though the system wasn’t backwards compatible, no one really cared so long as it meant they could get graphical upgrades. Fans took a mediocre launch line-up and put up with it by playing superior indie games and simply waiting until the good stuff was finally released to the public. The system was sold out throughout the holidays, though by the early part of 2014 Sony had mostly gotten their supply chain under control, and people could buy the console whenever they wanted.
4 Xbox Series Doesn't Have PS5 Sales But Fans Can Still Barely Find It
The Xbox Series has been doing quite well for a system that launched without much in the way of exclusives. Though Microsoft has been buying up a ton of developers, this approach hasn’t yet yielded much in the way of video games, in part because it simply takes so long to develop new games in the first place. Even their major first-party title, Halo Infinite, was forcibly delayed due to a poor reaction to the gameplay.
None of this has stopped the system from being sold out though, and currently, people aren’t able to get one directly from places like Wal-Mart or Amazon.
3 PlayStation 5 Is Still Sold Out Nearly A Year After It's Release
The PlayStation 5 has a lot to live up to. Despite being a $500 console and the subject of plenty of memes, fans have been trying to get it from the moment it was announced. People online turned the console into a meme, as they joked about what they would do to get someone else to buy it for them.
Now that the system is out, it’s impossible to find on store shelves. Scalpers are selling the console for $800 and $900, acquiring the console through bots that snatch up any new systems placed on websites as soon as possible, even eight months into the console’s release.
2 Nintendo Wii Was Sold Out A Year And A Half After It's Release
The Nintendo Wii was a minor miracle for Nintendo, who had years of making poor business decisions finally come back to them with the GameCube. Despite being the most well-known of all three companies, they managed to finish firmly behind the Xbox and PlayStation 2 during that era, selling less than 22 million copies.
But with the Wii the company did everything right—they had a strong launch line-up and a reasonable price at a time when there was a recession and Xbox and PlayStation were releasing $400 consoles. (And the PlayStation even had a more expensive SKU that was $600.) That plus the game’s motion controls embraced a new audience of people and the company has been on a different path for the last two generations. The system was sold out for a year and a half after its release, well into 2008.
1 Nintendo Switch Was Hard To Get Three Years After Its Release
After a disastrous Wii U release where people weren’t even sure if it was a new console or an add-on to the Wii, Nintendo took on an entirely different take with their next console. Aware that they had always dominated the handheld space, Nintendo decided to combine the next-gen console and handheld systems to create one of their most successful systems ever.
This allowed them to develop a variety of games for all audiences, and bring in people who loved the DS and 3DS as well as people who wanted console gaming. In the end, the system was sold out well into July. And that wasn’t even the worst, as the system was sold out in 2020 as well, with fans everywhere wanting to enjoy all of Nintendo’s family-friendly titles while they were stuck in their houses. Currently, Mario Kart is still a monster seller alongside Animal Crossing: New Horizons.