Estimated worldwide sales figures: probably around 1,230,000 units in just over a year of lifespan.
As with all Sega classic hardware and software, the 32 X has suffered in recent decades with the dissemination of wrong information about its worldwide ales figures, generally disseminated by incomplete and misleading information disseminated by Wikipedia over the last few decades. The main responsible is Sega itself for never having released official and complete sales figures of any of its hardware and games. Here are presented the most accurate figures available with their respective sources.
USA:
800,000 units
"Finally with regards the launch of the 32 X Shinobu Toyoda of Sega of America recalls, "We had an inventory problem. Behind the scenes, Nakayama wanted us to sell a million units in the US in the first year. Kalinske and I said we could only sell 600,000. We shook hands on a compromise - 800,000. At the end of the year we had managed to shift 600,000 as estimated (in less than two months), so ended up with 200,000 units in our warehouse, which we had to sell to retailers at a steep discount to get rid of the inventory."". It is not clear whether these figures also include sales in Canada.
Reference: Stuart, Keith (2014). Sega Mega Drive Collected Works. Read-Only Memory. ISBN 9780957576810.
The Wikipedia article uses this same reference erroneously as if it were worldwide sales. Some other language versions of wikipedia even reference erroneously 600,000 units as if it were worldwide sales, make even more of these numbers (600,000), when in reality it was just sales in just over one in the US (part of November 1994 and December 1994). These figures are actually less than half the likely number of 32X worldwide sales during its short lifespan.
Japan:
270,000 units
Reference: Game Players, "Vol. 9 No. 2 February 1996" (US; 1996-xx-xx), page 25)
Europe:
Just like its North American counterpart, the 32X was initially popular, with orders exceeding one million, but not enough were produced, and shortage supply problems arose.
Reference: https://segaretro.org/History_of_the_Sega_32X#cite_note-:File:GamePlayers_US_0902.pdf_p25-14
Sales by year:
1994 (less than two months): over 65,000 (unknown for many European countries)
1995: Unknown
1996: Unknown
Reference: Man!ac Magazine staff (May 1995). "Videospiel-Algebra" (in German). Man!ac Magazine (Cybermedia Verlagsgesellschaft mbH).
The 32 X was launched at the end of 1994 in Europe, as well as in Japan and the USA and not in January 1995, as wikipedia wrongly states. This wikipedia error, as usual, has spread to numerous other pages on the Internet. There are different release dates depending on the European country considered.
References:
1) The Games Machines (Book). page 33.
2) Mega Drive. Ed Europa (book). page 34.
3)SegaWiki. https://sega.fandom.com/wiki/32X#:~:text=The%2032X%20was%20released%20on,for%20%C2%A3170%20%2F%20DM%20400.
Australia
Unknown
South Korea
Around 5,000 units
Asia (other)
Unknown
Brazil
Between 3,000-50,000 units
References:
https://consolevariations.com/variation/console/sega-mega-32x
https://www.sega-16.com/2015/
https://segaclassics.blogspot.com/2020/07/truth-and-myths-about-32x.html
https://segaclassics.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-best-32-x-games.html
More information on sales figures for Sega consoles and add-ons:
https://segaclassics.blogspot.com/2013/01/console-wars-true-story-part-1.html (Master System)
https://segaclassics.blogspot.com/2020/07/console-wars-real-sega-genesis-mega.html (Genesis / MD)
https://segaclassics.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-real-sega-cd-sales-figures.html (Sega CD/ Mega CD)
