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Forums - Sales Discussion - Microsoft Reveals Xbox Series X/S Sales Numbers

Mar1217 on 02 July 2023
aTokenYeti said:
Mar1217 said:

Those 7 million Xbone sold missing from the tally is weird but I guess some overseas market must've picked up the slack in places we didn't have much info on. It does help that the Xbone was quite cheap towards the end of it's life so it prolly found a less fortunate audience there

The Xbox One S had a 4k blu ray drive and could be found on sale frequently for $250 or less, it was also a small and good looking little console, it was a great value budget home media center and I’m sure a lot of people bought it for that. 

Heck there were 200$ or even 150$ promotions for the All digital model (The E model if I do remember right)

Thise were the last times home consoles saw such deep cuts in hardware prices.



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DonFerrari on 02 July 2023
gtotheunit91 said:
DonFerrari said:

I know they did. But in the recent past one MS rep (I think it was even Phil) posted on Twitter sales number that were taken (and credited) from VGC.

The slide itself didn't had a source I guess (like when Sony gives sales number and put the source as internal tracking or anything like that).

Oh I remember what you’re talking about now! It started with someone like Jeff Grubb I think it was posting VGC estimates of Xbox Series consoles and it began to spread on Twitter so much that it got a retweet from Aaron and Phil. So props to Trunks for sure that he’s that close on console estimates for having so little public data available. 

Yep it was something like that. Some may have even thought MS was giving real numbers when they didn't notice it was referencing VGC. And for me if MS was retweeting it, the numbers must have been pretty close to what they had internally (I think it mentioned only Series at the time and not X1).



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari on 02 July 2023
Mar1217 said:

Those 7 million Xbone sold missing from the tally is weird but I guess some overseas market must've picked up the slack in places we didn't have much info on. It does help that the Xbone was quite cheap towards the end of it's life so it prolly found a less fortunate audience there

Don't think it is the case, but could be X1 and mainly X1X used on the farms for the Xcloud portion (but considering MS mention on their capability on UK, I don't think there were more than 1M X1 on their farms even if we count WW).



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

chakkra on 02 July 2023
Norion said:

Xbox Series should do better than 58m though probably not as much as Microsoft had hoped. If they almost sold 60m despite screwing up as much as they did with the Xbox One I think they would've easily reached the 70's if it was closer in power and the same price as the PS4 at launch and they didn't have such a disastrous reveal.

chakkra said:

I mean, considering:
1) PS4 was $100 cheaper at launch.
2) PS4 was more powerful, which meant ALL 3rd party games ran better on it.
3) PS4 had better 3rd party support (I mean, the X1 had almost 0 support from japanese developers).

You gotta wonder why the heck did so many people choose the X1 over the PS4? I'm inclined to think that Xbox's 1st party games did a lot more heavy lifting than Sony's.

I expect it's mostly brand loyalty. A lot of 360 owners switched to the PS4 but most didn't cause they didn't mess up enough for that to happen.

I could get behind the brand loyalty angle if we hadn't just seen 85% of Wii owners skipping the Wii U, and around 40% of PS2 owners skipping PS3, and I think we can all agree that the Xbox brand is not as strong as the other two.

Heck, most of the X360 owners were previously PS2 owners, and it's hard to believe that they would have built any loyalty towards Xbox yet.



trunkswd on 02 July 2023
DonFerrari said:
gtotheunit91 said:

Oh I remember what you’re talking about now! It started with someone like Jeff Grubb I think it was posting VGC estimates of Xbox Series consoles and it began to spread on Twitter so much that it got a retweet from Aaron and Phil. So props to Trunks for sure that he’s that close on console estimates for having so little public data available. 

Yep it was something like that. Some may have even thought MS was giving real numbers when they didn't notice it was referencing VGC. And for me if MS was retweeting it, the numbers must have been pretty close to what they had internally (I think it mentioned only Series at the time and not X1).

It was Aaron Greenberg that retweeted VGChartz. Specifically the ones that had Xbox Series compared to the Xbox 360. I think he did it twice. I don't think Phil Spencer retweeted VGChartz.

He never retweeted Xbox Series compared to Xbox One. We now know why. We had it undertracked.

Xbox Series is pretty close at least as they didn't provide a date so it could be as of March as quarterly tends to be when sales figures are posted even if it just internally and the June quarter hadn't ended yet. And it said 21M+ implying it is somewhere above 21M but below 22M. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

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chakkra on 02 July 2023
Farsala said:
chakkra said:

I mean, considering:
1) PS4 was $100 cheaper at launch.
2) PS4 was more powerful, which meant ALL 3rd party games ran better on it.
3) PS4 had better 3rd party support (I mean, the X1 had almost 0 support from japanese developers).

You gotta wonder why the heck did so many people choose the X1 over the PS4? I'm inclined to think that Xbox's 1st party games did a lot more heavy lifting than Sony's.

Compare early PS3/360 and the 360 was doing quite well due to quality games like Halo 3, Gears of War and exclusive JRPGs like Lost Odyssey. Even early XB1+ kinect sales were quite good despite the $100 more expensive due to quality games like Titanfall.

But when MS struggles to push out quality games like for most of XB1 and XB Series life, then they end up selling less combined than the 360.

Meanwhile end of PS3 and into the PS4 era, Sony pushed out quality first party games and the result was the PS3 resurgence and PS4 selling quite well.

So it has nothing to do with the PS4 being cheaper, more powerful, having more 3rd party games on it, AND the fact that most of X360 owners were actually PS2 owners who migrated to Xbox..

Yeah, that makes sense..



chakkra on 02 July 2023
DonFerrari said:
Mar1217 said:

Those 7 million Xbone sold missing from the tally is weird but I guess some overseas market must've picked up the slack in places we didn't have much info on. It does help that the Xbone was quite cheap towards the end of it's life so it prolly found a less fortunate audience there

Don't think it is the case, but could be X1 and mainly X1X used on the farms for the Xcloud portion (but considering MS mention on their capability on UK, I don't think there were more than 1M X1 on their farms even if we count WW).

Wait, are you saying that Xbox is counting the units they use for their servers as units sold?



SvennoJ on 02 July 2023
haxxiy said:

This means that in the end PS4/XB1 outsold the PS3/X360 despite a whole year headstart for the X360 and a quick drop-off that was rather uncharacteristic of Sony consoles for the PS4.

How are the totals looking with Wii / WiiU / Switch in the mix?

I guess 3DS and Vita need to be added as well to make a guess at whether the dedicated console+handheld market is still growing or shrinking. With these new numbers it does look like the HD twins grew a little. But is that from people leaving Nintendo for basically abandoning the TV side. Handheld was already shrinking I think, PC saw growth.

What I'm trying to get too, how healthy is the video games market in terms of growth. Is the pool of gamers still growing and is that all carried by PC while the dedicated console+handheld market is shrinking?



trunkswd on 02 July 2023
SvennoJ said:
haxxiy said:

This means that in the end PS4/XB1 outsold the PS3/X360 despite a whole year headstart for the X360 and a quick drop-off that was rather uncharacteristic of Sony consoles for the PS4.

How are the totals looking with Wii / WiiU / Switch in the mix?

I guess 3DS and Vita need to be added as well to make a guess at whether the dedicated console+handheld market is still growing or shrinking. With these new numbers it does look like the HD twins grew a little. But is that from people leaving Nintendo for basically abandoning the TV side. Handheld was already shrinking I think, PC saw growth.

What I'm trying to get too, how healthy is the video games market in terms of growth. Is the pool of gamers still growing and is that all carried by PC while the dedicated console+handheld market is shrinking?

When it comes to the size of the different gaming markets mobile is by far the biggest, followed by PC then consoles. That's why Microsoft is releasing their games day one on PC now and why they are trying to expand into the mobile market. Microsoft executives wants Xbox to be as profitable as their other divisions in the coming years. 

That's also why we are seeing Sony release their games on PC, even if it is a year or two after the PlayStation version. They realize not all PC gamers are interested in buying consoles and bringing their games to PCs will help drive more revenue and profits. 

And for Nintendo look at Pokemon Go and how big it was on mobile. 

Console market overall has been fairly stagnant in terms of the number of people who use them. It's just the average money spent per person on consoles has increased over the last few generations. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

DonFerrari on 02 July 2023
trunkswd said:
DonFerrari said:

Yep it was something like that. Some may have even thought MS was giving real numbers when they didn't notice it was referencing VGC. And for me if MS was retweeting it, the numbers must have been pretty close to what they had internally (I think it mentioned only Series at the time and not X1).

It was Aaron Greenberg that retweeted VGChartz. Specifically the ones that had Xbox Series compared to the Xbox 360. I think he did it twice. I don't think Phil Spencer retweeted VGChartz.

He never retweeted Xbox Series compared to Xbox One. We now know why. We had it undertracked.

Xbox Series is pretty close at least as they didn't provide a date so it could be as of March as quarterly tends to be when sales figures are posted even if it just internally and the June quarter hadn't ended yet. And it said 21M+ implying it is somewhere above 21M but below 22M. 

Yep. It certainly makes sense for me.

chakkra said:
DonFerrari said:

Don't think it is the case, but could be X1 and mainly X1X used on the farms for the Xcloud portion (but considering MS mention on their capability on UK, I don't think there were more than 1M X1 on their farms even if we count WW).

Wait, are you saying that Xbox is counting the units they use for their servers as units sold?

The slide wasn't about units sold, it just say "console", which I understand as system shipped (and sure in the case of X1 would be equal to bought by end users, and perhaps in use on the farms, while for Series it would also have some amount on transit to store) or sold - the slide itself doesn't clarify the source or definition. And as I said, even if counting systems on farm, by MS admission of support on UK I don't think there is more than 1M X1 and 100k Series X used for XCloud at the moment. Was just trying to put some ideas on the 7M gap, since the USA+Canada+UK we have strong numbers and they make most of the Xbox market.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."