Phil Spencer Wasn't Kidding; Data Shows Xbox Really is Losing the Console War
Phil Spencer was not exaggerating. It looks like Sony is indeed dominating the console market, as PlayStation 5 is apparently selling much better than the Xbox Series X and S.
Recently, Phil Spencer assured that Microsoft is losing heavily in the console market. This was part of the pushback against Sony's protest over the Redmond giant's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Nevertheless, Spencer may have been quite right: The Xbox Series X/S apparently lags far behind the PlayStation 5.
Leonard Barros Barreto, who manages Xbox production, was scheduled to appear at Brazil's BIG Festival event, held as part of a panel at the ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program (via Idle Sloth). During the presentation, it was revealed that Xbox Series X and S have sold a total of 21 million units. Including the Xbox One, Microsoft has sold 79 million consoles in total.
Microsoft has not shared the sales results of its gaming hardware for a long time. At most, financial reports mention that gamers are buying more or fewer Xboxes than before. Concrete numbers appeared only in analysts' texts. Only that it was difficult to consider them as fully reliable stats, such as those regularly reported by Sony in the official documents.
It should be noted that the information from Brazil apparently did not specify which data it refers to. However, if we assume that it is about the total sales of XSX/S until the last fiscal quarter (i.e., until the end of March 2023), it looks like Microsoft is indeed losing in the next generation of consoles.
As a reminder: according to recent reports a total of 38.4 million copies of the PS5 had been sold by March 31. As both 9th-gen platforms debuted at almost the same time, the XSX/S performs much worse than Sony's latest console.
The same is true for the XOne: after subtracting the confirmed production of newer platforms, it comes out that the 8th-gen Xbox achieved sales of 58 million units - less than half the 117.2 million of the PlayStation 4, which was reported by Sony almost a year ago. This is exactly what claimed Microsoft last year.
As an aside: Barreto reports that nearly half (48%) of Xbox Series S owners have never owned an Xbox before (via GamesIndustry.biz). Apparently, the cheaper variant of the console has attracted a lot of new buyers... though not so many that Microsoft's 9th-gen consoles could catch up to Sony's device.
