Summary
We’ve known for a while now thatXboxis struggling to shift its hardware,leading to big exclusives like Sea of Thievesand Hi-Fi Rush being released on competing consoles. It raised several questions about whetherXbox hardware is needed at all in today’s gaming landscape, and the chances of Xbox becoming a third-party publisher have never been higher.
Recent sales figures for theXbox Series Xdon’t paint a pretty picture either, as it was recently revealed byCircana video game industry advisor Mat Piscatellathat the Series X is trailing both the Xbox One and Xbox 360 in terms of sales in each console’s first 43 months on the market. Piscatella states that Xbox One is leading Xbox Series X in sales by a whopping 13 percent at the moment, while the Xbox 360 is leading only slightly.
Given that the Xbox One is remembered as the console that kickstarted the company’s current woes, that’s not a great sign, and the Xbox Series X shows almost no signs of improving in sales in the coming years. There are big titles like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed, and Perfect Dark in the pipeline, which will almost certainly help, but Xbox is doing itself no favors withconfusing Game Pass changesandprice increases.
PlayStation 5 Is Currently Outselling The PlayStation 4
What makes matters worse is that Xbox’s rivals are doing pretty well for themselves. In th same thread of tweets, Piscatella reveals that the PlayStation 5 is currently outselling the PlayStation 4 by eight percent when comparing each console’s first 43 months on the market. That’s particularly impressive when you remember that the consolewas ridiculously difficult to get hold of during the year in which it launched.
And while we don’t have anything to compare the Nintendo Switch to,since it’s now a seven-year-old console, we do know that it ranked second in unit sales in May’s hardware market. With the Xbox Series X selling less than the Nintendo Switch, despite the latter entering its final year and having been on sale for more than half a decade, it’s safe to say that things aren’t going so well for Microsoft, and this could explain why the company seems so interesting in releasing its exclusives on other platforms.
