Microsoft Sold Fewer Consoles Than Competitors in 2022

It’s clear that Sony has clearly won the last generation of consoles, with the PS4 clearly ahead of the Xbox One. But how big was the gap really? So far there is little evidence for this. But now Microsoft itself has pulled the cat out of the bag.

The mistakes Microsoft made with the Xbox One hardly need explaining, but a lot has to do with the launch. One of the reasons was to force buyers to buy the Kinect, but many couldn’t see why they should pay $100 or euros for something they didn’t even need.

The PlayStation 4 train pulled away and Microsoft didn’t even come close to catching it – even though they corrected the errors of the startup phase quite quickly. This was reflected in sales as well: While Sony regularly cheered and rushed from one success milestone to another, the Redmond-based company gave up relatively quickly on publishing concrete figures on Xbox One sales.

Sold twice as many PS4s

This is also why there are only estimates of the number of devices Microsoft has been able to sell. This has not changed to this day, but now it is possible to make a fairly accurate estimate. Because according to court documents, Microsoft has recorded (via Eurogamer) that Sony has sold “more than twice as many” consoles as its American competitor in the past generation.

Sony recently announced that it has sold a total of 117.2 million PlayStation 4s. So if you calculate that there were more than twice as many PS4s as Xbox One devices, Microsoft comes up with a maximum of 58.6 million units and probably closer to 55 or 50 million. Microsoft’s legal dispute in Brazil is about the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the authorities there are scrutinizing the deal and are quite open here as well, which is why all court documents can be viewed – and reveal a lot.