It is no secret that Microsoft lags behind Sony in terms of console sales. But we now have some fresh data that puts these comparisons in a more perspective.
The Wall Street Journal shared the data in a new YouTube video. According to estimates from research firm Aldora Intelligence, Microsoft has sold 28.3 million Xbox Series X|S units as of June 2024.
For comparison, Sony has officially sold 61.7 million PlayStation 5 units to date (as of June 30, 2024), meaning that Xbox is currently more than 2x behind.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn’t disclose Xbox sales in its financial reports. The last time the company officially revealed this data was during its ID@Xbox presentation in Brazil in June 2023, when it showed a slide stating that the Xbox Series X|S has sold over 21 million units globally.
If Aldora’s data is correct, that means Microsoft has managed to ship just over 7 million Xbox Series X|S units in the 12-month period since then. To put it in perspective, Sony sold 20.8 million PS5 units in FY23 ended June 30, 2024.
Both companies are facing the slowdown of console sales as we pass the halfway point of the current generation’s life cycle. Many analytics firms reported the decline in hardware revenue, with the latest data from Circana showing that July 2024 was the first month with year-over-year growth in US console sales since December 2023.
It is worth noting that Microsoft has always lagged behind Sony in this field. In the previous generation, the PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One by two times. The only time Microsoft came close to its Japanese rival was during the Xbox 360 era, when it sold 84.9 million units vs. the PS3’s 87.4 million.
The WSJ report suggests that losing the console war may be one of the reasons why Microsoft has been investing so heavily in subscription and cloud gaming. The company is trying to make content the centerfold of its video game business, not hardware.
“The incumbents like Nintendo and Sony, they live and die on great content and this magnificent retail distribution infrastructure they’ve built,” Joost van Dreunen, co-founder and CEO of Aldora Intelligence, told WSJ. “So it’s in Microsoft’s interest to push into its data centers and its infrastructure in the cloud, because it can’t beat Sony and Nintendo in retail.”