We were waiting for Microsoft to announce their sales figures for their next gen console, the XBox One. This after Sony announced that its PlayStation 4 console has passed 7 million units sold worldwide as of April 6, 2014. This number represents sold to consumers, and not just units sold to retailers.
The 5.1 million units sold that Microsoft mentioned does however reflect total units shipped, and not baught by customers.Despite being a few million units behind the Playstation 4, things are going well. In their report, Microsoft revealed that they had sold in 1.2 million extra Xbox One consoles from January through March 2014 which is a decent amount of consoles in the retail channel. By no means are they sitting on their laurels or slacking off the pace.
According to VGChartz, which keeps track of game sale numbers and hardware sales (including a fairly accurate tally of consoles sold to and activated by consumers), approximately 4.3 million customers have a Xbox One as of 12 April 2014. Taking Microsoft’s tally of 5.1 million consoles in the channel, that leaves approximately 800,000 units left on store shelves, waiting for owners to caress the rumble triggers and speak into the microphone to tell Kinect what to do next.
I think it is fair to say that the race is being won by Sony. Not only does their figure represent sales to customers, but one can only assume that had Sony given actual shipped numbers it would have been more than 7 million.
