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Has Xbox One finally turned the tide against PS4 in the North American market?
It’s far too early to say, and there are all sorts of factors at play, but NPD numbers have shown that Microsoft’s console outsold its rival for the second successive month in August. Previous to these wins, Xbox One hadn’t won the monthly sales race since October 2015.
In July, price promotions of Xbox One in an effort to clear out stock ahead of the Xbox One S were the likely source of the victory. In August Microsoft can thank both the arrival of the Xbox One S, and possibly folk holding back from buying PS4 following the leaking of the Slim and the then upcoming New York conference.
We continue to see strong engagement on Xbox Live with total global gaming hours on Xbox One consoles increasing 42 per cent year-over-year,” US Xbox marketing boss Mike Nichols told VentureBeat.
We’ve also received an incredible response to Xbox Design Lab, which saw millions of visits to the site and hundreds of thousands of designs created by fans. We’re excited to launch Clubs and Looking for Group on Xbox Live broadly this holiday alongside some of our biggest titles for the year, including ReCore, Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4 and Dead Rising 4.”
The Xbox One S has thus far had limited impact in the UK, where stock of the 2TB SKU was extremely limited. The 500GB and 1TB versions will launch shortly, as will the PS4 Slim, of course. These launches will be followed by the PlayStation VR in October and the PS4 Pro in November.
