Court documents reveal that the PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One more than two-to-one during the last generation.
Microsoft continues to attract regulatory scrutiny over its proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard. This time the government in question is Brazil. Court documents show a somewhat surprising statistic: Sony’s PlayStation 4 outsold Xbox One in a lopsided rout.
Kotaku reports:
This information about the Xbox One was first spotted by Game Luster in documents submitted by Microsoft to Brazil’s national competition regulator. The Verge was able to translate the docs, which reveal that Sony sold more than twice as many PS4 consoles compared to Microsoft’s last-gen Xbox.
“Sony has surpassed Microsoft in terms of console sales and installed base, having sold more than twice as many Xbox [consoles] in the last generation,” confirmed Microsoft in the court docs uploaded earlier this month.
While most people and analysts out there figured the Xbox One had not sold as well as the PS4, hearing it from Microsoft is still interesting as the company stopped reporting Xbox sale numbers back in 2016.
As of March 2022, Sony reported PlayStation 4 hardware sales numbers just north of 117.2 million units. This means that Xbox One sold shy of 58.6 million units. In comparison, the Xbox 360 managed hardware sales of 84 million units throughout its nearly ten-year life cycle.
We don’t have figures on Xbox Series X|S, so we can’t compare them to Microsoft’s other consoles. Judging by the lack of availability at retail stores though, we’re guessing that it is doing just fine.
Of course, hardware sales are less important for Microsoft now with Xbox Game Pass since the service is available on Xbox consoles, PC, as well as both Android and iOS mobile devices. In fact,
Samsung smart TVs now support Xbox Game Pass cloud streaming.
