In 2016 Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures of the Xbox One, but recent documents from the company have confirmed how little the console sold compared to the PS4.
If you remember the early days of the Xbox One, they were a bit of a disaster due to some poor early decisions (that were admittedly quite quickly backtracked), and three years after its release in 2016 Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures. But now as reported by The Verge, in some documents filed to Brazil’s national competition regulator, Microsoft has admitted Xbox One sales figures were less than half of the PS4.
“Sony has surpassed Microsoft in terms of console sales and installed base, having sold more than twice as many Xbox in the last generation,” said Microsoft, as translated from Portuguese by The Verge.
Sony recently announced that it no longer planned to report PS4 sales, so the final lifetime sales figure sits at a pretty huge 117.2 million as of March, making it the fourth best selling console of all time. Meaning the Xbox One sold less than 58,600,000 units total, which matches up with the estimated sales figures of the console.
For some added context, the Nintendo Switch has sold around 111 million units, not too far off from the PS4’s figures, and obviously essentially double that of the Xbox One. However, due to parts shortages, Switch sales have fallen by about 20%, meaning the speed at which it has been selling likely won’t continue until the chip shortage is resolved.
These same documents also contain a claim from Microsoft that Sony is supposedly paying some kind of “blocking rights” to keep games off of Xbox Game Pass. It’s unclear what this actually means, as it could be just due to PlayStation now having its own version of Game Pass, or it could be a part of publishing contracts.