Launch sales for new AAA single-player games are now as much as 80/20 in PlayStation’s favor versus Xbox, it’s claimed.
That’s according to The Game Business editor Christopher Dring, citing confidential sales data, who notes that the split is “often lower” when it comes to online multiplayer games.
Dring’s comments come days after Microsoft was forced to deny that the vast majority of GTA 6 pre-orders have been for the PlayStation 5 version.
A post recently shared on social media by IGN claimed that the PS5 version of GTA 6 was selling eight times more copies than the Xbox Series X/S version, based on the site’s own affiliate link data.
Commenting on the news, Dring told VGC that the real figure was “unlikely to be as extreme” as 8-to1, but that single-player titles are now regularly selling far better on PlayStation at launch.
“It obviously varies by title,” he said. “But if you take an AAA single-player title like Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert or 007 First Light, you’re seeing about 75 – 80% of their sales coming on PlayStation during the launch month (removing PC data).”
Dring said his comments were based on data from multiple private sales sources, which The Game Business has access to.
“As I say, it varies by game. An online shooter often does very well on Xbox, for instance, when factoring in the install base. I would add that 30% of a multi-million-selling game is a lot of games.”
As of March 31, Sony reported that PS5 sales have surpassed 93 million units. Microsoft doesn’t report hardware figures, though according to some sources, Xbox Series console sales to date could be less than half of this figure.
According to the latest annual State of the Game Industry survey, managed by the Game Developers Conference, the number of developers interested in working on Xbox games is half that of PS5 or Nintendo Switch.
In recent years, Xbox has pushed towards becoming a multiplatform business, repositioning its consoles as just one of many ways to play its first-party games.
