By using SEGA America
In the PS2 days, SONY reported console shipped numbers, not sold. XBox fans used to point out the game to the hardware sale ratio too
But in the end, people only care about the winner. I seem to remember the Game Cube having the biggest launch in the UK out of all the consoles (at that point) That held up well didn't it
Well there is always a correlation between shipped and sold; you're not going to ship more than what the demand requires, and retailers aren't going to hold onto inventory at numbers and prices unfavorable for their bottom line for a lengthy period of time. So even if Sony just reported shipped back then (I wouldn't know, didn't follow sales data back then in fact Sony's sales numbers stuff at E3 was kind of a meme people poked fun at), they were selling through most if not all of those just by inference.
And stuff like attach ratio just give a general normalized sales rate per user. Doesn't say anything about the actual number of heavy buyers in any ecosystem, and higher attach ratios are way easier to do for systems with smaller install bases since most of that install base is going to be core enthusiasts who tend to buy more games anyway. I.e less mainstream and casual owners who would weigh down the attach rate average over time.
Still not necessarily seeing what this has to do with PS1 & Saturn, but I'd agree most people only care about the winners. I'm not one of those types; I got big love for classics like Saturn, Neo-Geo, PC-Engine etc. I just like also having accurate accounts of things that happened in the past, because I don't hold what happened to companies like SEGA against companies like Sony (whereas maybe a decade ago, I did fall into that type of trap).
What is this comparison ? The PS3 sold more than the 360, it just had a tough first few years. And the 360 is the biggest success of Microsoft in gaming, still Sony sold more...
It was a nice slap in Sony's "face" to tell them "hey come back to reality", that showed them that even though they're absolute leaders in this industry, that cannot do anything thy want, that there are limits.
The Switch in the other hands in coming after the Wii U, the biggest failure from Nintendo, 13 millions is 3 to 4 times less than the Xbox One, the biggest failure from MS (well the Series are doing worst), so yes the Switch after the Wii U really looks like they were reborn from their ashes.
I think like someone else ITT said, oversimplifying PS3/360 to just units sold misses the bigger picture. Yes PS3 got a pyrrhic victory over 360 when all was said and done in hardware units, and a way bigger one in mindshare with hardcore/core enthusiast gamers. But Sony lost a
MASSIVE amount of market share and mindshare in the Americas and UK markets, at a time when the U.S market in particular was still the largest for gaming overall (mobile hadn't taken off yet, PC was in a slump in general so consoles were still the big breadwinners in total gaming market growth).
Almost all of the cultural mindshare Xbox was able to leverage upon for XBO and Series, even if it has been depleting increasingly so over the years due to terrible brand management, can be owed directly to the 360's Western (mainly US & UK) market performance during 7th gen. And more specifically, how it gained so much of that at the expense of PlayStation losing a ton on both fronts that same generation.
The tail-end of PS3 helped to start reversing some of that, but right up to XBO & PS4's reveals and I'd say even their release, a vast majority of Western gamers and press were still betting on XBO having the lead last gen. It took until like six months after both systems launched for a good chunk of them to even begin
considering the likelihood 8th-gen was Microsoft's to lose. It wasn't even until post-Titanfall and Rise of the Tomb Raider debacle (a bit after Uncharted 4's launch), and E3 2016, when a lot of these types
finally accepted Xbox lost 8th-gen!
That's how much mindshare Xbox still had with media and lots of gamers by that point, again thanks to 360's dominance in the US & UK.