Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE) (TYO:6758)’s PS4 has enjoyed huge popularity recently, and its sales have exceeded those of the Microsoft’s Xbox One for consecutive four months. This not-surprising news was highlighted in the sales report for the month of April released on Thursday by the NPD Group.
Declining software sales
Hardware sales witnessed a growth of 76% over the same period in 2013 in “Console Hardware sales,” which gained 120% in April compared to same month last year. Liam Callahan, a game industry analyst with NPD, said, “Life to date, sales of PS4 and Xbox One hardware have more than doubled the combined sales of PS3 and 360 hardware through their first six months of sales.”
Last year, hardware sales totaled $109.6 million and have jumped to $192.6 million today. Hardware has been performing exceptionally well, but software could not keep up and software sales saw a decline of 10% on a year over year basis from $267.8 million to $240.8 million. The titles launched in April did not do well when compared with the spring line-up last year, and this is the primary reason for the drop, according to Callahan.
Of the software sales in April, a majority of those were claimed by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and in the chart for top game sales, MSFT held eight of the ten slots, selling 2.6 million units between the Xbox One and Xbox 360. Xbox One has seen more cumulative sales of games than any other eight-generation console, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft trying hard to compete with PS4
Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE) (TYO:6758) announced that it sold 7 million PS4 consoles to its customers last month while Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced that it had shipped 5 million units to retailers. This shows that there is a huge and persistent gap between the two devices. In the month of April, 110,000 Xbox One units and 76,000 Xbox 360 units were sold by Microsoft.
Not so impressive news for Microsoft comes after the company announced plans for the unbundling the Kinect motion sensor, and to revise the price of the console to $399, which will bring it in parity with Sony’s PS4. The company has long advocated that Kinect’s role was significantly important for the Xbox One experience.
