Xbox Series X|S Outsold the PS5 in Europe in February - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 March 2022 / 4,165 Views
The head of GamesIndustry Christopher Dring via Twitter revealed the Xbox Series X|S has outsold the PlayStation 5 in Europe in February, according to data from GSD.
"It was a great month for new games," said Dring. "Console sales continue to struggle. PS5 stock levels meant that, for the first time, more Xbox Series consoles were sold than PS5s (in tracked European markets)."
In a follow up tweet he revealed Xbox Series S were the majority of Xbox Series X|S sales for the month.
"Oh it’s heavily skewed towards the S right now."
This is the first time an Xbox console has outsold PlayStation since July 2010, which is the month the Xbox 360 S launched.
We'll have the February European market report for you tomorrow, courtesy of GSD. It was a great month for new games. Console sales continue to struggle. PS5 stock levels meant that, for the first time, more Xbox Series consoles were sold than PS5s (in tracked European markets)
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) March 14, 2022
Oh it’s heavily skewed towards the S right now.
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) March 14, 2022
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I think it is highly likely that Xbox is outselling PlayStation globally for the year 2022 and that there are no signs of this letting up. If anything PlayStation (and Series X) stock has gotten worse, not better.
So many people doubted the viability of the Series S. No one should be doubting now
I would have liked the Series S to have an identical CPU and ram capacity as the Series X... Just so it ages better and ports aren't as troublesome.
But as a Series S, Series X, Playstation 5 and a Switch OLED owner... These are all fantastic machines which are great at their respective price points... Which is the key giver for the Series S. Price.
Microsoft can make some movements in variations of consoles... A Discless Series X or a Series S with a BDRom drive.
I would likely upgrade my Series S to one with an optical drive if I could...
CPU seems virtually the same from what I've seen. RAM is the bigger issue.
I would also like a Series S with a disc drive, but it seems highly unlikely.
Series S is 3.6Ghz... 3.4Ghz with SMT.
Series X is 3.8Ghz... 3.66Ghz with SMT.
So the Series X CPU performance is a small step up... Enable SMT and it has the same single threaded performance as the Series S, but double the threads.
There is a difference. Not a generational one... But it would be like comparing a Ryzen 3600 against the 3500, which tends to have less clockspeed gap.
I mean, in the end, the Series S is tasked with less CPU operations anyway as it's visuals tend to have less fidelity on display.
But I am thinking of games that wish to push physics to the next level, where those clocks and threads of the Series X would have paid off.
Even if there was a game with physics or other tasks that really pushed the CPU, it seems like the Series S would simply have more performance dips due to the bottleneck. Essentially, it seems to be small obstacle compared to RAM and GPU.
Thus far, my primary disappointments with Series S ports have been ray tracing being removed in numerous titles and it seems to me developers aren't tweaking visual settings properly to get the best out of the hardware.
Once they start taking advantage of the velocity architecture and specs besides the ssd for loading, ports should be on par besides 4k resolutions. We haven't seen anything yet.
I wouldn't say people doubted the viability but more the demand for it. Early sales indicated thst people strongly prefer Series X as a platform as there was always Series S' on shelves last year prior to the holiday
Itd be interesting to see how much is preference for Series S now (more casual audiences? People looking for a gamepass machine) versus people settling for whatevers available. Im thinking its the latter but either way its a win for MS, no one really accounted for the chip shortage and how Series S would allow MS to get out more units, more easily
The Series S isn't on shelves in all markets. Series S supply and demand has been hitting parity at different times in different markets. It seems to have hit parity in Asia first, Europe second, and the U.S. third. From what I've seen, Series S supply still hasn't matched demand in Canada. Every time I look at the major online stores in Canada, at least one is sold out of Series S stock (and usually closer to half of them). Not sure if that says more about demand or more about supply (though, like the U.S., Canada has long been a strong market for Xbox.... Canada was actually a stronger market for Xbox than the U.S. for the OG model back in the early 2000s, thanks to higher broadband penetration in Canada).
This is great news for Xbox.
In some sense, I still think this data has relatively little meaning, because supply does not meet demand with any of the current generation consoles. But, as we saw in the 8th generation, success begets success. So, regardless of the reason that Xbox is selling better than PlayStation in many areas, that early success is likely to snowball. Even with cross-platform play, there are still people buying the console that their friends have. So, the better Xbox does now, the better we can expect it to do throughout the generation.
Two Reasons!
- Probably because Series S is easy to find.
- Xbox is better.
Eksbawks is teh best box?
That is surprising, but well PS5 can't sell if there isn't stock.
Lets not ignore that Series X's aren't that much easier to find either.
That seems to be a choice by MS though. Heavily skewed in favour of the series S leaves a lot of room for interpretation but we can safely assume that it's greater than 60/40
I don't believe MS are making a lot of consoles in general due to other avenues to play their games, however that doesn't take away the fact that they are both hard to find and that one outsold the other recently.
Thats why sales are being driven by series S
So the Series S must be doing crazy numbers than, if its carrying the brand to 2nd place.
Nope, the stock of PS5 and Series X being low is what is driving it.
You don't need to sell crazy numbers to overtake a console with significantly worse stock problems. For reference only 75 PS5s were sold in Spain last week lol. MS sold 1000 series consoles the same week which is solid for their brand but nothing amazing
Well guess MS were alot smarter with the Series S than many believed.
I wonder if Sony airlifted more stock over the holidays than Microsoft did, inflating Sony's Q4 2021 sales, and correspondingly reducing Sony's Q1 2022 sales? Sony acknowledged they were doing that at least in the UK over the holidays. If they subsequently went back to exclusively sea shipping that would create a unit lag that would easily allow Xbox to pull into second place over Sony.
Combine that with Series S being easier to manufacture in volume than either Series X or PS5, and you'd have the end result we see here. It's at least a possible theory.
When was the last time xbox outsold playstation in EU?
Probably 2007. I can’t remember a single time the Xbox One outsold the PS4 in Europe
Another thing affected by the war, as meaningless as it is in the bigger picture, but still. One just can't catch a break trying to acquire the more powerful consoles. Distribution to Russia has been suspended, so that should basically mitigate the issue somewhat, but then again Russia is not as big a console market as you would think. And there are logistical problems now because China cannot move freight through Russia at the moment.
A $399 Xbox Series X would be very interesting. Just like with PS5, taking away the 4K Blu-ray drive from Microsoft's point of view would probably only save $10-$15 off the bill of materials. It isn't that costly of a part. However, the idea is that without it, all game sales go through the Xbox Store and therefore Microsoft gets a full 30% of that sale; no lower amounts due to retailer fees. And no used game sales to cut them out completely. At $70/game, a person would only need to buy 4-5 titles to make-up the difference between a $399 digital only Series X and the current $499 model.
Given global inflationary trends and shortages of key components I do not think a $399 Series X would be viable. In fact I would imagine that Sony is regretting launching a $399 SKU of the PS5, and that is evidenced by how few of those digital edition PS5s they are making.
Just dropping the BD-ROM drive wouldn't get the Series X down to $399 (unless Microsoft prices it artificially low, as Sony did with the PS5 Digital). So more likely an all-digital Series X would be $450 standalone, or $499 bundled with something. I think the latter would make the most sense, sell a bundled Series X digital for the same price as the Series X Disc standalone.
That's very unexpected. The shortages for Sony are probably worse than we thought as Europe has been pretty PlayStation favored.
Console sales for PlayStation should never be struggling like this after 2 major first party exclusives releasing so close to each other as I imagine March won't be much better.
The Series S just has a more efficient to produce CPU... And requires less DRAM and NAND chips, so it's no surprise that it can be produced far more readily which translates to a higher volume of sales in a market that is supply constrained.
It's also a potential turning point for Microsoft... As the Series S is very much marketed as a Gamepass box... Plus the games are being pumped out now.
Not finding an answer to the stock shortages really shot Sony in the foot. I went into GameStop the other day you still can't get one or even preorder one it's ridiculous. The other problem is their shitty State of Plays with no big announcements each time. It's brought public perception down. They are waiting for VR2 but are losing ground in the meantime by keeping so quiet.
Hmm, perhaps something to do with their SSD implementation.... Quite a few more things semi custom or completely custom on the ps5 opposed to the series x/s.
