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[Jaybe]

This is from Microsoft’s latest filing to the FTC. I thought it interesting as Xbox never releases console unit sales. With either Nintendo’s or PlayStation’s calendar 2021 numbers, then we would have Xbox’s. I’m a bit surprised at the more than 2 to 1 ratio of PlayStation to Xbox, since (IIRC) some less credible sales sites had tweeted closer unit gaps which were liked by a Microsoft executive.

 

[feynoob]

Its expected.
2021 they used some of their xbox on their data centers. Dont know how many were there.

 

[yurinka]

Very interesting. I thought that due to chips shortage Xbox and PS would be way closer, but seems that it's pretty much the same "slighly higher than 2X" seen in the previous gen.

On a separate not, it's alway funny to compare real numbers provided by the console makers versus the ones posted in VGChartz. The OP mentions 2021 only and the VGlolz numbers are LTD, but it's easy to see how wrong they are:

 

[DarkMage619]

Well this certainly makes it apparent that MS is far from being any sort of monopoly in gaming. Hard to get the legal basis to block their acquisition of Activision.

 

[Jaybe]

Very interesting. I thought that due to chips shortage Xbox and PS would be way closer, but seems that it's pretty much the same "slighly higher than 2X" seen in the previous gen.

Same here. I was thinking more 1.5 to 1 given Sony’s supply constraints and that Satya said MS won Oct, Nov, Dec 2021 in the US.

 

[mansoor1980]

look at us , we are getting smaller.

 

[mckmas8808]

So much data coming out of this FTC filing. And yeah...... 2 to 1 in 2021 is bad. And that was before Summer of 2022 when Sony actually started making PS5s for real.

 

[GHG]

It's hilarious how they are attempting to make themselves out to be some little struggling company.

Let's just ignore the fact that their market position is a reflection of their overall contribution to the console industry.

 

[adamsapple]

See, FTC.

Cut them some slack, Lina.

 

[Kacho]

Absolutely brutal.

Shame Nutella is so focused on services. Doubt they’ll ever gain any ground without true exclusives and their primary focus being Game Pass and xCloud. No1curr.

 

[mckmas8808]

Absolutely brutal.

Shame Nutella is so focused on services. Doubt they’ll ever gain any ground without true exclusives and their primary focus being Game Pass and xCloud. No1curr.

Super brutal. And with Redfall being pushed back to May.......what does MS do for Q1 of 2023?

 

[Ronin_7]

Very interesting. I thought that due to chips shortage Xbox and PS would be way closer, but seems that it's pretty much the same "slighly higher than 2X" seen in the previous gen.

On a separate not, it's alway funny to compare real numbers provided by the console makers versus the ones posted in VGChartz. The OP mentions 2021 only and the VGlolz numbers are LTD, but it's easy to see how wrong they are:

Vgchartz is utter Trash.

 

[lukilladog]

It seems you can be succesful without Call of Duty

 

[yamaci17]

more than what they deserve with their boat load of mediocre games

 

[ChiefDada]

2:1 in 2021? That was NOT the figures released by most analysts. Very weird.

 

[Pallas]

Vgchartz is utter Trash.

Yet it’s still used by some on here.

Personally I’m not too surprised, Microsoft’s output has been abysmal in 2022. I think it’ll get better but there’s no denying that they were terrible this year as far as first party games go.

 

[Crayon]

The xb1 set them back bad. Look at the number of available games compared to PS4 and I don't mean just precious aaa exclusives everyone obsessed about. The total catalog. Even when counting the 360 games made to work (which I believe you should), it's a huge gap.

The other huge hit was the $500 launch price. What a blunder among several more just at launch.

 

[remember_spinal]

A hole…grows bigger the more you take away from it.

 

[Three]

Yet it’s still used by some on here.

Personally I’m not too surprised, Microsoft’s output has been abysmal in 2022. I think it’ll get better but there’s no denying that they were terrible this year as far as first party games go.

It's used by Greenberg. That is for 2021 and what's weird is that their 2022 with no games ratio is better.

 

[azertydu91]

A hole…grows bigger the more you take away from it.

Same with psoriasis.

 

[nocsi]

They should’ve included apple to make themselves look smaller

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Absolutely brutal.

Shame Nutella is so focused on services. Doubt they’ll ever gain any ground without true exclusives and their primary focus being Game Pass and xCloud. No1curr.

 

[bitbydeath]

PS5 Sales
Dec 31 2020 - 4.5M
https://www.gematsu.com/2021/02/ps5-shipped-4-5-million-units-in-2020-ps4-shipments-top-115-million

Dec 31 2021 - 17.2M
https://www.gematsu.com/2022/02/ps5-shipments-top-17-2-million-ps4-tops-116-8-million

17.2M - 4.5M = 12.7M for 2021.

 

[Skifi28]

Yeah, yeah. Spare a thought and some change for poor trillion dollar Microsoft trying to buy the entire industry.

 

[sinnergy]

It’s a whole year 2022..

 

[Jaybe]

This chart is from August when Nintendo reported their FYQ1 (ending June 2022)
So calendar year, 2021 should be
4.72+4.45+3.83+10.67
23.67 million Nintendo
So about 47.34 console units in total
16.1 for PS roughly
7.57 for Xbox roughy

 

[Mr Moose]

It’s a whole year 2022..

They haven't shared that % with us.

 

[SlimySnake]

I mentioned this a few months ago when xbox had 13 million sales and ps5 was around 25 million. Getting outsold 2:1 even after a $299 console, gamepass, billions on zenimax acquisition is proof that Phil has to go. Not that they need more third party studios.

The Problem is Xbox and Microsoft leadership.

 

[yurinka]

I mentioned this a few months ago when xbox had 13 million sales and ps5 was around 25 million. Getting outsold 2:1 even after a $299 console, gamepass, billions on zenimax acquisition is proof that Phil has to go. Not that they need more third party studios.

The Problem is Xbox and Microsoft leadership.

I think it's too early to analize hardware sales due to being too heavily supply constrained (outside Series S) due to chips shortage.

I think it would be more fair to wait until the PS5 and Xbox Series have been easily available in the stores during a year or so to get a more realistic idea of how the market is accepting them and which is the real difference in demand (I bet will be bigger than the current one since Xbox was already able tomatch supply and demand of Series S consoles).

 

[yurinka]

17.2M - 4.5M = 12.7M for 2021.

23.67 million Nintendo

So in 2021, according to Sony they shipped PS5s 12.7M and according to Nintendo they shipped 23.67M Switches.

But according to MS Nintendo shipped 50% of the consoles so the total would be the double of 23.67M (47.34M), Sony a 34% of that (16.1M, not 12.7M) and MS 16% that, 7.57M Xboxs shipped.

Something is wrong, the numbers don't match.

Edit: PS4 is still alive, so if PS4 shipped 3.4M during 2021 then Sony's consoles would total 16.1M and the numbers would match. Mistery solved.

 

[Imtjnotu]

math aint mathing with these numbers

 

[Del_X]

I blame this on America’s addiction to poorly written third-person narrative games.

 

[M1chl]

#1 Nintendo

Nooo

 

[Jaybe]

#1 Nintendo

Nooo

 

[Rockman33]

Have to remember PS4 was selling decent in 2021. Xbox one not so much.

 

[Del_X]

Have to remember PS4 was selling decent in 2021. Xbox one not so much.

That’s a good point. I think they straight up stopped manufacturing the One S and X in 2020.

 

[feynoob]

Edit: PS4 is still alive, so if PS4 shipped 3.4M during 2021 then Sony's consoles would total 16.1M and the numbers would match. Mistery solved.

You fixed the numbers for this one.

So MS isnt counting just ps5 vs xbox series, but they also including ps4 to the equation.

They are trying the game GHG

 

[ZehDon]

It feels a little dishonest to include PS4 and Xbox One sales in the hardware figures, when the FTC is talking about the future of the industry - where the PS4 and Xbox One are unsupported. I'd wager the Xbox Series X is doing proportionally much better than the Xbone did, giving the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S a smaller margin than the PS4 and Xbone. With that said, it is interesting to see the overall hardware figures laid out; I wonder how Spencer convinced Microsoft to not only stay in the gaming business, but invest USD$77b more.

 

[yurinka]

You fixed the numbers for this one.

So MS isnt counting just ps5 vs xbox series, but they also including ps4 to the equation.

They are trying the game GHG

Yeah, in case PS4 would have sold what I mentioned.

Notice that MS mentions "PlayStation" instead of "PS5", and "PlayStation" includes both PS4 and PS5. They mentioned "Xbox" on their side, but XBO was discontinued in 2020. So MS shipped zero XBO consoles in 2021.

So MS wasn't lying. Also, considering that in the previous generation Sony also sold slightly above twice the Xbox number, so these numbers would make sense.

 

[feynoob]

Well, notice that MS mentions "PlayStation" instead of "PS5", and "PlayStation" includes both PS4 and PS5. They mentioned "Xbox" on their side, but XBO was discontinued.

from my point of view, they are dishonest about it.
From the law prespective, they can say that they discontinued their xbox one long time, and only focusing on Series model, while Sony is doing both.

Still, shameless act from MS.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Oh look more number spinning, the house special.

 

[yurinka]

from my point of view, they are dishonest about it.
From the law prespective, they can say that they discontinued their xbox one long time, and only focusing on Series model, while Sony is doing both.

Still, shameless act from MS.

Well, MS tries to twist the narrative all they can to defend their insterests without stricly lying.

They do things like to say "hey, ABK is only one of many publishers out there" while trying to avoid mentioning ABK is the biggest 3rd party publisher in gaming and that they own CoD, the most successful 3rd party series in console for maybe decades.

Or they say "hey, to make ABK games exclusive wouldn't make finantial sense and we'll continue releasing CoD everywhere" without mentioning that they don't give a fuck about profitability in gaming and that once these 3 extra years (now 10 extra years) CoD would very likely go exclusive and they would do these extra years only to get the acquisition greenlighted by regulators.

 

[DForce]

Well this certainly makes it apparent that MS is far from being any sort of monopoly in gaming. Hard to get the legal basis to block their acquisition of Activision.

Console sales aren't a measurement of success and Microsoft is thinking beyond consoles, remember?

This chart means nothing because their biggest games from Zenimax have yet to hit consoles and they will certainly improve a lot of COD is taken away from PS and exclusive to PS.

 

[DForce]

It's funny how the narrative is seemingly going to change again.

4-5 years ago - It was claimed that Sony won the last generation because of what happened in 2013 and that they took the power narrative.
3 years ago - Microsoft now had the power narrative. Exclusives weren't a big factor because they only sold 10% out of the entire user base.
Within the past 3 years - Microsoft doesn't care about console sales as they're moving beyond consoles.

Today - Look at the unit sales. Sony is dominating. They need big exclusives to compete.

 

[DarkMage619]

Console sales aren't a measurement of success and Microsoft is thinking beyond consoles, remember?

This chart means nothing because their biggest games from Zenimax have yet to hit consoles and they will certainly improve a lot of COD is taken away from PS and exclusive to PS.

Who says console sales aren't a measure of success? They aren't the ONLY measure but they absolutely are one of them. The whole reason the XSS exists is to increase the number of consumers MS has access to by providing a lower cost, causal friendly device.

The chart is a good representation of the market in 2021. We have no way of knowing what ZeniMax titles will do especially since the only ones released so far hit PlayStation first. CoD won't hypothetically be 'removed' from PlayStation for a decade or more and judging by Minecraft it won't ever be so that's an irrelevant point.

 

[analog_future]

I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by this.

Globally, PlayStation has always been ahead of Xbox, even during the Xbox 360 days. The only place Xbox really gives PlayStation a run for it’s money is the United States.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

Well this certainly makes it apparent that MS is far from being any sort of monopoly in gaming. Hard to get the legal basis to block their acquisition of Activision.

1. Attempts to purchase the biggest 3rd party publisher - check.

2. This would be the most money Microsoft ever spent - check.

3. Owns the most gaming studios among Sony and Nintendo - check.

4. Wants to make one of the biggest revenue earning IPs in gaming exclusive to a platform with less than 20% of market share - check.

The FTC was in meetings looking at Microsoft like...

The attempt to disrupt the gaming market by spending more money than your competitors can is just the start. Got to crawl before you walk...

 

[DForce]

Who says console sales aren't a measure of success? They aren't the ONLY measure but they absolutely are one of them. The whole reason the XSS exists is to increase the number of consumers MS has access to by providing a lower cost, causal friendly device.

The chart is a good representation of the market in 2021. We have no way of knowing what ZeniMax titles will do especially since the only ones released so far hit PlayStation first. CoD won't hypothetically be 'removed' from PlayStation for a decade or more and judging by Minecraft it won't ever be so that's an irrelevant point.

You're only proving my point.

You're basically saying this supports Microsoft's case knowing the fact that they don't only use consoles are a measurement of success.

 

[feynoob]

 

[yurinka]

1. Attempts to purchase the biggest 3rd party publisher - check.

2. This would be the most money Microsoft ever spent - check.

3. Owns the most gaming studios among Sony and Nintendo - check.

4. Wants to make one of the biggest revenue earning IPs in gaming exclusive to a platform with less than 20% of market share - check.

The FTC was in meetings looking at Microsoft like...

After the acquisition they will continue being far from being market leaders in gaming, PC gaming, console gaming or mobile gaming or even game subs and also having a very small market share in all of them, the other console makers will continue having a bigger user base than MS, will continue having more total amount of games and amount of exclusives than MS and will continue being more profitable than MS so there's nothing close to a monopoly, a monopolistic action or something like that - check

Regulators should allow MS buy ABK and make the ABK exclusive if and when (once they complete signed deals) they want.