Xbox One vs PS4: Sony is still in the lead

The  Xbox One vs PS4 console wars sales didn’t reveal any big surprises for the month of May. Sony is still currently in the lead and Microsoft is doing a pretty poor job at catching up lately. VGChartz reports that a whooping 577.092 PS4 consoles were sold last month alone while the number of  Xbox One units sold was just 178.481. The huge difference is quite surprising, but the fact that the Wii U managed to sell 276.396 units is even more so. It’s common knowledge that Microsoft has been lagging behind Sony pretty much the entire time. Now it seems they’re losing more and more ground to Nintendo as well. No doubt the important game releases that happened in May were largely responsible for these results.

Sony greatly benefited from the release of Watch Dogs, which managed to sell more than 4 million copies in its first week. This not only made it the most successful new IP of all time, but also provided a massive boost to the company’s sales. Out of the 4 million copies, 1.86 million were purchased for the PS4. Meanwhile, Watch Dogs copies sold for the Xbox One only amounted to 898.780, which is almost half. Unsurprisingly, the release of the game affected console sales as well. Following the release of  Ubisoft’s blockbuster title, the number of PS4 units sold had almost doubled compared to previous weeks. One the other hand, Microsoft only saw an increase of about 25 percent over previous weeks.

While a Wii U version of Watch Dogs was not released, the console benefited from the launch of Mario Kart 8. The game managed to sell more than 1.12 million copies, thus surpassing Watch Dogs sales for every platform except the PS4. Mario Kart 8 is a testament that exclusive titles can sell just as good or often better than cross platform ones. Last month’s other big name, Wolfenstein: The New Order also sold better for the PS4 than on the Xbox One. However, the impact on the final results was much less noticeable than it was in the case of Watch Dogs.

Microsoft made some pretty big announcements lately, including the Kinect-free Xbox One and the addition of external storage support for the console. It is assumed that moves like this will help the company sell more units in the future, but will it be enough? What Microsoft really needs right now are some important exclusive titles if they really plan on catching up to Sony. We can expect some interesting and perhaps game changing announcements to be made at E3.