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Microsoft Ships 6.6 Million Xbox Consoles During Last Quarter
During today's earnings call, Microsoft announced its Xbox sales for the quarter ending December 31, 2014. During this span, the company shipped 6.6 million units across both Xbox One and Xbox 360.
When compared with the 2.4 million Xbox units shipped in the quarter prior to that, Microsoft showed significant improvements. This most recent quarter includes the holiday season, the Xbox One price cut, and aggressive bundling. The year prior to that, on the heels of the Xbox One launch, Microsoft shipped 7.4 million consoles in the corresponding quarter. Most recent shipment figures put Xbox One at 10 million in mid-November, though we suspect that number to be quite a bit higher now.
Xbox One outsold PlayStation 4 for only the second time in November 2014 and followed that up in December. We won't know how Sony fared during the same quarter for a little while. The company has delayed its quarterly earnings report, citing the Sony Pictures hack that took place in November of last year as the reason.
[Source: Microsoft]
Our Take:
With Microsoft still playing catch-up with Sony as far as sales numbers (Sony has reported 18.5 million PlayStation 4 units sold) are concerned with the current generation, this is a positive sign for the Xbox brand. We knew Microsoft had a stronger lineup of exclusives for the holiday season, and it was just a matter of whether or not gamers would take note of that. While we won't know what Sony did during this same time frame until next month, I would imagine this makes for a much more interesting competition between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In that case, gamers are the ones who win.
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