The Xbox One has had its share of problems during this round of the console wars. At launch, the system was portrayed as a “fast and powerful work in progress”. Its chief rival, the PlayStation 4, was much more polished. At the last minute before launch, fans were taken aback by the Xbox One’s pricing and its policies regarding second hand games. Microsoft was forced to pull some features as a result. While the Xbox One may not be winning the current round of the console wars, that can still change. The Xbox One has of course also been improving itself over time.
So what about EA? How could they have accidentally revealed sales information for Microsoft’s flagship console? Well, we already know that there are about 35 million PlayStation 4s out there in the world now. As for the Xbox One, Microsoft is silent about its sales figures. Their “dignified silence” would make sense if it is indeed not doing as well as they’d like. As it turns out, Eurogamer was listening to Electronic Arts’ most recent conference call. During this call, CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed their estimate for this console generation’s overall sales figures.
According to Blake Jorgensen, there are about 55 million console units in the hands of fans. If you subtract the 35 million PlayStation 4 systems mentioned above, you get 20 million. Since not all of those 20 million systems are Xbox Ones, that would mean its sales figures would be less than 20 million. engadget.com reached out to Microsoft for comment on this, but they got a “no comment” type of response back from the software titan. While this generation of consoles is still ongoing, Microsoft still has time to improve their numbers. That may be easier said than done, but it is still possible.
