Sony Sells 30.2M PS4 Consoles, Microsoft Refuses To Release Xbox One Sales Numbers
The highly popular gaming console that is under threat from PC gaming sold faster than any of its predecessors.
PlayStation’s direct competitors are Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U.
Sony introduced PlayStation 4 in November 2013 and recently cut prices in major markets, including the U.S., Europe and Japan to spur sales. The Australian market missed out.
“We are sincerely grateful that gamers across the globe have continued to choose PS4 as the best place to play since launch two years ago,” said Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment.
The latest total, as of Nov. 22, is up from more than 20 million in March, when Sony provided its most recent update on PlayStation 4 sales. Sony has said it aims to ship more than 17.5 million units during the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2016.
Analysts say PlayStation 4 is running far ahead of Xbox One.
Nintendo said more than 10.7 million units of Wii U were sold as of September this year, since the product launch in November 2012.
The Wall Street Journal said that Sony made the PlayStation business a new pillar of the group, and the arm is expanding its services beyond the traditional game business where users would buy a single game title at a retail store or via network download.
While it is getting ready to release a virtual-reality headset dubbed PlayStation VR next year, it now offers a streaming-based videogame subscription service as well as a cloud-based live and on-demand TV service.
These offerings are now available even on non-Sony devices, such as Samsung Electronics TVs or the Fire TV Stick from Amazon.com
Just as it looks like Sony is about to release backward compatibility between PS 2 and their PS4 gaming console, Microsoft has come out and said that Xbox One backwards compatibility for original Xbox titles would be “very challenging”.
This is despite the Head of Xbox Phil Spencer talking about new Xbox One backward compatibility extending all the way back to the original Xbox earlier this year.
In a recent collection of classic Star Wars games for the PS4, a few PS2 games have been included and it looks they’re being emulated rather than remade for the system.
It appears that Sony is now more than hinting that backwards compatibility could be on the way for the PS4.
Microsoft has offered an update on the topic, straight from the mouth of Microsoft’s Director of Program Management for Xbox, Mike Ybarra.
“We’re not looking at original Xbox 1 games on Xbox One yet, and right now the focus is making more 360 games work, but I would say that nothing is impossible,” said Ybarra to The Inner Circle Podcast.
“Certainly very challenging. Getting 360 to work was incredibly challenging, and really a multi-year engineering investment going all the way back to the original certainly would challenge the team.” he said.
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