The regular NPD report is out now and according to its figures for March 2016, the PlayStation 4 continued to be the best-selling console in the US. This was quickly corroborated by a statement from Sony thanking its fans for their continued support.
This latest small victory is by no means surprising as Sony has dominated sales for this generation of consoles. Meanwhile, Nintendo isn’t even at the table this generation, being busy working on its future console.
Unfortunately, Sony didn’t actually release any hard sales numbers. Instead the company was quick to point out that its console was also the platform where the super popular new title, The Division, sold most of its copies – again unsurprising based on the sheer number of PlayStation 4 consoles out there.
Meanwhile, the Xbox team was eager to highlight the increased engagement figures that they"re seeing across the platform. According to the press statement, global hours spent gaming on the Xbox One were up 89% this March, compared to the same period last year. The Xbox One team also highlighted the successful launch of Quantum Break, a game that’s taking the market by storm and quickly became a top selling title. In fact, Microsoft seems to be banking on the title’s success to hopefully mitigate some of Sony’s advantages in this race.
Another point worth mentioning, is that the console and accessory market overall saw a decline of 19% compared to the same time last year. Console sales by themselves declined by 17% when compared to March of 2015. This seems to be an interesting trend that can no longer be excused just by the retirement of Xbox 360 and PS3 sales. Instead, it looks like markets are reaching saturation, even for this new generation of devices. That in turn has given rise to numerous rumors of Microsoft and Sony launching new hardware soon. But at least on the Xbox side of the aisle, those rumors were quickly put to rest.
Still, it’ll be interesting to see how much longer companies can rely on the current batch of consoles, before declining sales force them into action.
Source: VentureBeat