While the worldwide economy has been influenced by the equally worldwide economic crisis, there is still a substantial audience which seems not to be influenced by current circumstances. That special group of people are the gamers, who are willing to continue spending cash in order to acquire their favorite games.
There are two types of console gamers: those who play on Xbox One and those who stand in favour of Sony’s PlayStation 4. Those on both sides of the debate can rattle off reasons why their console of choice is better, but at the end of the day, each console’s success comes down to the numbers.
Forbes reported that PlayStation brought in $160 million out of the company’s $2.37 billion in sales. Meanwhile, Microsoft had managed to attain about half of Sony’s PS4 sales, with a total of 1.4 million Xbox One and Xbox 360 sales combined during this same period.
The game industry made $13.1 billion in revenue from new hardware and software sold at U.S. retailers, industry-tracking firm The NPD Group reported yesterday. That matches the $13.1 billion consumers spent in 2014. But that revenue only came in flat because of increased spending on interactive toys and accessories made up for a drop in hardware and software spending. None of this means that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are floundering. Instead, those systems are making more money while their predecessors’ sales continue to wither.
Here’s a breakdown of the exact numbers:
| • PlayStation 4 – Total Sales: 27,684,836 • Xbox One – Total Sales: 15,078,055 • PlayStation 4 – Monthly Sales: 1,088,542 • Xbox One – Monthly Sales: 572,823 |
(Sales figures as of November 2015)
NPD analyst Liam Calahan argued that the new systems continue to sell far faster than their predecessors. He also continued by saying that: “The lead from the prior generation has expanded, and that’s due to the strong PS4 and Xbox One 2015 holiday.”
Finally, when it comes to software, Callahan once again points the finger at last-gen and the shriveling portable market. “For 2015, while overall new physical software dropped by 2 percent, console software increased by 2 percent,” he explained. “Portable software was down 34 percent, with [PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U] software increasing by 52 percent. This offset the decrease of [PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii software, which was down 53 percent. And that led to a net increase of $73 million in physical software sales.”
So stay tuned for more PS4 Vs Xbox One sales numbers once all the wallet dust has settled.