Microsoft may have done a lot to encourage new people to buy the Xbox One by removing the Kinect from the basic bundle and dropping the price by $100 accordingly, but it still can’t catch up to the PlayStation 4. According to new numbers from NPD, Sony’s is the top-selling U.S. next-gen console for June, which marks the sixth month in a row it has collected that honor.
Sony’s console might be the highest-selling of any console available, too, as NPD says that total sales for both PS4 and Xbox One were higher than those for the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well. Nintendo actually managed to rally this month, too, with Wii U sales that were 48 percent better than they were the same time last year, according to the company. Sales of Mario Kart 8 topped the charts for games overall with 470,000 copies sold in June.
Microsoft crowed about its console sales doubling yesterday, but failed to provide any specifics about how many devices were actually sold. Sony likewise doesn’t reveal specifics, and the lack of solid numbers likely indicates that both are off their peak pace of somewhere north of 100,000 units per month, lofty heights reached during the hype surrounding the consoles shortly after launch.
Still, Sony’s victory this month shows that Microsoft still has some ground to make up following its slightly off-key launch of the Xbox One – it began the process of reframing the console with a similar gaming-focused ethos to the PlayStation 4′s positioning at E3. The key now for both consoles will be games and software, and incentivizing future console sales through more price drops and bundle arrangements.
Source: techcrunch