As we all know, which console launches out of the gate with the best sales is a poor indication of which will ultimately become the dominant platform. But when have the console wars ever been about maturity? Here’s how they’re stacking up.
The latest NPD numbers are in and according to them… Sony won. Although “win” is, of course, subjective as CVG points out:
According to a statement from SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton, PS4 outsold its rival Xbox One in the consoles’ opening month on sale. Microsoft, however, extracts positives from another angle, claiming Xbox One to be the “fastest-selling console” in North America in November, averaging 101k units sold per day since its November 22 launch, according to Larry Hryb.
Sony is also winning in the valuable “Standees Taken Out By Swarms of Germans” metric, but the really interesting story here is just how quickly these consoles are selling. A lot of people, myself included, assumed that Sony and Microsoft would have modest starts.
Instead, just the opposite has happened. Part of this is both Sony and Microsoft are doing a better job of meeting demand, but this marks the first time, ever, that a console has cleared a million units during its launch week, let alone such a short period. To give you an idea of how quickly things are moving, the Xbox One has handily outsold the Xbox 360 by a factor of three in a similar launch period.
That’s staggering, and what it means is that, jokes and forum arguments aside, gamers win. Both consoles selling quickly means that there’s a wider userbase early on, which means we’ll get better games sooner. It also means that a crash that some nerds seem desperate to have happen is surprisingly not going to happen, at least not yet.
In the long term, of course, anything can happen. Brisk console sales don’t add up to the industry being free of the problems that have plagued it. But essentially, when it comes to the console race, the winner turns out to be gamers.