Fig. 1: PS4’s record-setting holiday quarter shipments easily outpaced estimates for Xbox One shipments over the same time.
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The last time we checked in on the sales battle between the big name video game consoles, Microsoft had seen its annual sales increase, but not fast enough to catch up to the still-surging PS4. The same trend was apparent in 2015’s all-important holiday quarter, which saw Sony continuing to extend its sales lead over the competition.
In recent earnings reports for the fourth calendar quarter last year (October through December), Sony announced shipments of 8.4 million PS4 units to retailers (Fig. 1), a record for the system and a 2 million unit improvement from the 2014 holiday quarter (more on the difference between shipments and “sell-through” below). Nintendo, however, announced 1.87 million shipments of Wii U hardware. That marks the system’s second straight year of slight decreases in holiday performance, which came despite the availability of well-regarded 2015 releases like Splatoon and Super Mario Maker.
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