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Console generation 8 · 2012–2025
Nintendo Switch won it, outselling PlayStation 4 by 39.4 million units — 34% more hardware. Across all 5 machines the generation sold 369.0 million units, and games released on them collected 6,665 Game of the Year awards in our database.
| Console | Maker | Released | Units | GOTY awards on it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo Switch | Nintendo | 2017 | 156.59M | 2,327 |
| PlayStation 4 | Sony | 2013 | 117.20M | 5,307 |
| Xbox One | Microsoft | 2013 | 58.00M | 3,670 |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | Nintendo | 2025 | 23.68M | 1,557 |
| Wii U | Nintendo | 2012 | 13.56M | 631 |
A game that shipped on three machines of this generation is counted for all three, because the question is how much award-winning software each box could play — not which console had it exclusively.
No. Nintendo Switch sold the most hardware, but the most award-winning library belonged to PlayStation 4 with 5,307 awards. Winning the generation commercially and winning it editorially were different outcomes here.
A console's figure counts every awarded game that shipped on it, so multi-platform releases raise several boxes at once and an exclusive raises only one. That makes this a measure of what you could play, not of what you could play only there — and it is why the numbers here are larger than any single console's exclusive line-up. All consoles, sales against awards.
Updated 2 October 2026 · Source: the Meta Awards database, where every award row cites where it was published.