that playstation 5 It sold more copies in one week than the NEX Playground, a plug-and-play motion control console. After a bit of a rough start to 2020, Sony's flagship console has consistently topped the console sales charts in the years since, often competing with the Nintendo Switch for the top spot. But for a brief moment in November, the PlayStation 5 lost ground to a device not made by one of its biggest competitors.
Overall, it's been a big year for the PS5. The console celebrated its fifth anniversary and moved closer to surpassing the PS3's lifetime sales figures. By June, the PS5 had sold more than 80 million units worldwide, reaching half the total sales of the legendary PS2. Despite these impressive achievements, the console still faces stiff competition, and in at least one case, that competition has come from an unexpected place.
A new PS5 Pro model has been released
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NEX Playgrounds outsold PS5 in one week in November.
The NEX Playground surpassed the PS5 to become the second best-selling console in the United States for the week ending November 22, 2025, according to Bluesky gaming analyst Mat Piscatella. Piscatella later told IGN that the NEX remains the fifth best-selling platform in the U.S. so far this year, just behind the Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X, and the original Switch. Although it only lasted a week, it is still an important milestone for NEX. The PS5 has sold more units than every Xbox console, so beating it even for a moment is no small feat. This is especially true for systems that don't have the Nintendo or Microsoft names on them.
NEX Playground is a motion control system similar to the Xbox Kinect in that it uses cameras to observe player movements and translate that motion into game input. PlayStation has tried a similar concept in the past with the EyeToy for PS2 and the PlayStation Move controller, which is more similar to the Wii remote for PS3 and PS4. Both attempts succeeded in selling at least 2 million units worldwide, but neither has stood the test of time. Xbox's camera-based motion control attachment has likewise been discontinued, but Kinect recently released new games for 2021. However, unlike Kinect or EyeToy, NEX Playground is completely plug and play, so users don't need to buy another system or buy additional games to use it.
Like the PS5, NEX Playground is not entirely new. Although it was released in 2023, it only recently became successful enough to sit among the giants of Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo. With a suggested retail price of around $250, it's significantly cheaper than the PS5, Switch 2, or Xbox Series X/S, which likely helped it skyrocket up the sales charts. However, the one-week increase was still not enough to take first place. That honor belongs to Nintendo with its latest console. This isn't all that surprising, considering the Switch 2 is Nintendo's fastest-selling system in the company's history, but temporarily beating the PS5 is a worthy feat in itself.
It's interesting to note that the best-selling console the week before Thanksgiving also supports motion controls. Even if that's not the main attraction of the Switch 2. It's unclear whether this signals the potential for motion controls to return more broadly, or whether the NEX Playground's price point and kid-friendliness helped boost its popularity during a time when costs were high. In any case, Piscatella was impressed, saying this was the first time a plug-and-play system had ranked so highly. Even if it loses the second-place spot, Piscatella expects to finish the year closer to fifth, proof that there is room for players other than Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox to enter the console market.
