The gulf between the two next generation consoles has not been as wide as previous releases, and each one is claiming their various victories wherever they can.
Nonetheless, it seems the Playstation 4 is doing rather well.
I’ve rambled on before about the odd nature of customer loyalty when it comes to consoles, and my thoughts about the Xbox One sales not being deterred by Microsoft’s train-wreck of an E3 reveal seem to be on the right track. Now that both consoles have been released in the United Kingdom and the United States, we can start to analyse how well they’re doing.
In the UK, the Playstation has topped the Xbox One sales by around 100,000 units in a 48 hour time period – the Xbox One sold an impressive 150,000 units in that time, whilst the Playstation 4 managed to sell 250,000. This makes it the fastest selling console in the British Isles, with Sony beating their previous record when they managed to clear 185,000 units of their handheld venture, the Playstation Portable (PSP).
Over the other side of the Atlantic, however, Microsoft have earned their stripes in the wake of Black Friday – the biggest shopping day in the States. Hundreds of retailers open early and slash prices by absurd amounts the day after Thanksgiving just in time for the lead-up to Christmas – Walmart even lowered the price of Microsoft’s previous generation console, the Xbox 360, to $99. Madness.
In total, statistics suggest that Microsoft took 61% of the console sales on the day with the Xbox 360 claiming 30% and the new Xbox One with 31%. Sony lagged behind with only 15% of the share.
On the global front, numbers are sketchy. Sony released figures of 2.1M sales worldwide for their console, while Microsoft haven’t confirmed figures in concrete – though one would assume they’re not too far behind.
Sony also tweeted that the ‘Share’ button the their console had been used 6.5 million times since release – that’s millions of twitch streams, gameplay videos and pictures all shared by Playstation 4 users.
Sony shouldn’t be too worried though – and by the looks of things, they aren’t. The Witness, an open world platformer for the PS4, posted on their front page what looks like stereoscopic images of the map – a 3D format which a virtual reality headset extension might use. Oculus Rift, anyone?
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