PS5 Console Sales Up an Impressive 81% This Year in the UK

Typo in headline?

It's amazing what having product to sell does for sales.

Now I see why certain console fanbase keep saying Uk doesn’t matter they’re favorite console doing poorly over there.

So Xbox is just....dire, Switch is doing shockingly well only 8% down this far and it's on its 7th year, and PS5 is selling as it should have done since launch.

All three are surprising for different reasons.

'Doesn't matter', is stretching it @4kgk2. However, less important than the rest of the World put together? Absolutely! These sales figures also starkly explain why Microsoft need to buy ABK. They need the content now. They cannot wait another two or three years to develop a few games in house. They need those games immediately else the future of Xbox is questionable at best. As it is, Xbox are unable to secure any big third-party exclusives because the market share is such that to go exclusive on the Xbox means that you are not offering your game to 70% of the potential market (the current split between Xbox and PlayStation is 30/70). No developer wants to miss out on such a large userbase and so only the PlayStation is able to offer big exclusives. When viewed in the terms of potential survival, it is entirely understandable why Microsoft are going after ABK. And whether we like it or not, we, on the PlayStation, need Xbox to survive as without competition, who knows what PlayStation will do with regards to game and console pricing, or subscription services, or indeed games themselves...

@Fiendish-Beaver if Xbox need to buy the industry to survive than they can go right head and die. Another rich American tech company will take they’re place anyway probably.

Time for a price cut, Sony.

@Fiendish-Beaver
Third party exclusives are bought. If MS have to pay twice as much due to their userbase being smaller then that’s still far more affordable to them given they are worth 20 times what Sony are.

The reason they are buying existing IPs is simply because they have no confidence in being able to create. They are buying a guarantee.

Because I was actually able to buy one this year.

@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think Microsoft needs to buy ABK, but it certainly helps. It's not as if the ABK acquisition will suddenly raise Series X|S consoles.

Microsoft needs to be bring the games that were announced ages ago that have yet to see the light of day.

I do think the upcoming Showcase is a make-or-break moment for Microsoft in terms of building momentum for Series X|S consoles.

If everything they show is as criticized as the Halo Infinite gameplay reveal, then I would be quite worried.

With Sony only seemingly having Spider-Man 2 from a first-party standpoint for the foreseeable future, Microsoft is in a great position to gain some market share back in the console space just on the sheer number of games that have yet to release.

Microsoft can't have any more missteps if it hopes to gain any kind of ground.

Also, it needs to stop favoring the Series S over the Series X. It seems like it's relatively simple to get a Series S, but not a Series X and I suspect Microsoft is manufacturing more of the cheaper machine.

This will be especially crucial when these heavy hitters do release, as fans will want to play the "best" console version of the games.

I absolutely understand what you are saying, @thefourfoldroot1, but a couple of things immediately spring to mind:

Firstly, as we saw with Forspoken, an exclusive is not a guaranteed hit. So you can imagine some hesitance on the part of Xbox in paying for an exclusive. Bear in mind that if a game is being offered as an exclusive to Sony for 1,000,000, that same game would cost Xbox in the region of 2,300,000. Affordable to Microsoft, absolutely, but chances are that they would have to stump up much more than that to cover the lost sales. Also, I used a million as a figure, but truthfully, I have no idea how much it costs to buy an exclusive, but if you work on the theory that it would cost Microsoft 2.33 times as much as it would cost Sony, you can soon see the problem. There is no guarantee of a hit, and there is no guarantee of more people gaming on the Xbox as a consequence. They could just be throwing money away, and their shareholders want to see a return on their investment. As rich as Microsoft are, they are still beholden to their investors.

Secondly, if Microsoft were to be as aggressive, or indeed, more aggressive than Sony with regards to buying exclusives, would that make things better? If Microsoft were to have paid for the exclusive rights to Final Fantasy 16, or any future Square Enix releases, there would be an uproar. Indeed, if Microsoft went out, right now, and bought the next 10 big AAA exclusives, people that game solely on the PlayStation would have good reason to be unhappy. Yet because Sony do the same, it's okay. And that is despite the fact that Microsoft aren't doing it. Whenever a game is made exclusive to a platform, it is not available on other platforms, but if Microsoft were to do this, people would complain. People often site that Sony have close ties with SE, and I agree, they do, but people also say that Microsoft have deep pockets. So there would come a point that even the likes of SE would take the money offered by Microsoft to put Final Fantasy on the Xbox as an exclusive.

Basically, people just don't want Xbox to succeed, which is incredibly short-sighted. They are not happy when Microsoft buy a company, but applaud Sony when they do. They would only want Microsoft to have an exclusive that doesn't actually impact them on the PlayStation, but cheer Sony when they do. I guess, ultimately, people are hypocritical...

I agree with everything you say, @GamingFan4Lyf. I actually think Microsoft got it wrong with the S. They should have done what Sony did with the discless PS5, and had the inner workings exactly the same as the one with a disc-drive. As it stands, the Xbox is not getting a version of Baldur's Gate 3 because the developers cannot get the game to run efficiently on the S. The S is already holding the X, and thus the Xbox brand back. Would they have been able to sell the S at £250? maybe not, but so long as the S was cheaper than the PlayStation version, I think they could still have done good business.

As for this next reveal show being make or break, I absolutely agree. They have to have a strong show. It needs to excel. It needs to make people want to buy an Xbox (and preferably straight away!). Anything short of that could be absolutely dire for Xbox. I believe it to be that important. However, that is also why I think ABK is so important to the the Xbox. They need that influx of games now, waiting a year or two or more for a game to be developed is way too long. Microsoft need to stem the decline in the sales of the Xbox, and they need people to think twice before deciding which console to buy. As it stands, people are opting for the PlayStation in far larger numbers than the Xbox, and as that gulf widens between the Xbox and the PlayStation numbers, so too does the difficultly in turning things around increase for the Xbox.

There's no doubt about it, these are exceptionally challenging times for the Xbox brand...

It's weird how xbox lives rent free in some people's heads. Hey I have all three consoles and I love them. PS5 being first place isn't new though, haha. Look at the history of consoles and you'll see xbox has always been third. Always. Sony has always been first. I think its funny that people on here fan boy so hard they state facts as if they're shots. Be happy with the games you enjoy, don't worry about who sells what or where.

Glad I got a playstation, can't wait for spider man 2. Gonna replay last of us 2 again this month.

Of course people don’t like platform holders buying exclusives. That goes for both sides. MS might get a bit more flack due to there just being numerically more PS players who lose out, but it’s also because most of Sonys deals are only timed exclusives, whereas MS buying up whole developers and even publishers and removing all games in that franchise forever is obviously a more extreme version of exclusivity.

As to risk. That’s is relative to wealth. Sony take much more of a risk by spending 1m on an exclusive than MS would spending 3m. Which is why Sony add value by helping their devs with in house knowledge, engines, motion capture studios, etc.

I don’t know of anyone who wants MS to fail per se. But if the only way they can succeed is to buy up huge publishers and control the most popular franchises then perhaps they don’t deserve to succeed (and by “succeed” I mean on their terms of making extreme profit and steamrollering competition, they already succeed with Xbox in terms of just making good profit, obviously).

And if they do decide to invest elsewhere due to opportunity cost, someone else will come along to fill the void as long as Sony are also not allowed to buy up all the content exclusively as MS want to (which is why these competition regulators are so important)

Personally I’d much rather Meta or Apple take up the third console place because they take VR seriously and that’s where all my best gaming experiences are now. MS dropped the ball on that. That’s a very niche opinion though.

@Fiendish-Beaver I would love to see a split on what the sales ratio is between the Series S and Series X. I have had a feeling for quite some time now that the Series S sales are far higher than they are for the Series X as I see far more people say they have the S compared to the X. Now granted, this could mostly be due to availability issues and it's just far easier to get your hands on the Series S. However, is that the case because there has been more demand for it compared to the Series X? Microsoft may have been smart in seeing the Series S as a cheaper option that people may buy as to supplement their primary console and use as a "game pass machine". I have some friends that have done this and they probably would never have invested if the Series X was the only option.

@Fiendish-Beaver From a revenue standpoint, yes, the ABK acquisition will make Xbox Game Studios a more profitable division within Microsoft.

It still doesn't scream "buy Series consoles!" At least, not immediately.

If Microsoft continues with console manufacturing and doesn't move to being a developer/publisher/Cloud service, then I could see it having an impact on the next console.

I mean, maybe people looking for a good budget option would look to Series S and Game Pass for the instant ABK library as a secondary console (a sale is a sale).

The Call of Duty crowd will stay where they are.

An amazing console selling well, who would have thought 🤔😂

I'd love to know this also, @Kevw2006. I do worry about games skipping the Xbox because of the power of the S. It's just not got enough guts to play the demanding sort of games that we are beginning to see. And what can Microsoft do about it now? They have put themselves in the disadvantageous position in which games are opting to miss out on the Xbox entirely, which thereby affects those that have purchased an X too, meaning they too are not happy. It's not like they can just tell developers to skip to S, as that then will cause a backlash among S owners that bought the console in the belief that it will play every game available on the platform (granted they can expect it to perform slightly less well, but they still expect to be able to play each and every game). Heaven only knows what Microsoft will do to sort out the mess they have made for themselves, particularly as the games are only going to get more demanding as the generation progresses...

I'm in the market for one, they have got few great games out already and many more with 60 FPS patches. Internet rumour mill led me to believe Sony will announce PS5 Slim at the last event amongst many of their hardware projects. I can't wait for another event, I'll probably end up with currrent disc one but it's just so unpalatable design to me (subjective YMSV). Fat consoles do have better thermals though.

PS: First post here, I'm over at PureXbox generally.

I don't understand why we hype up sales numbers for Sony. Such a dystopian world we live in.

Hey, I did my bit & bought one in May!

@Fiendish-Beaver spot on. Xbox gamers complain about Playstation having timed exclusives, the only reason Xbox don’t have timed exclusives is because it would cost them millions more. Hogwarts for example sold 80/20 in favour of Playstation. MS would have to cover that 80% loss to get exclusivity. I hope MS do get Activision an i hope COD goes on Game Pass too. I don’t think it will really hurt Playstation an if they sign the 10 year deal nothing will really change spart from the exclusive content Playstation gets.

@Fiendish-Beaver it would cost Microsoft far more than that for timed exclusivity. Take Hogwarts for example, that sold 80/20 in favour of Playstation. For Xbox timed exclusivity they’d have to cover the 80% lost Playstation sales, then a bit more to make it appealing to the dev. Sony would only have to cover the 20% loss plus a bit more. This is why Series S/X don’t have timed exclusives, the Playstation player base is far greater than Xbox. Back in the PS3/360 days the player base was close, PS3 sold a couple million more consoles, an the 360 had a few timed exclusives.

Exactly, @TheArtfulDodger. This is exactly why there have been no third-party exclusives on the Series, and why Microsoft have resorted to buying companies. It probably makes more financial sense for them to flat out buy a company, than it does to pay for an exclusive.

Hmm seems like these sales figures are helping xbox's cma case.

@Fiendish-Beaver Quite right. If you're a business, and you have one option which is buy the rights to a product for 300+% more money than your competitor can, or you have another option of buying the producer of said product at fair market value and obtaining the product at-cost...... there's really not much decisioning that needs to happen.

@Haruki_NLI series X is there fastest selling console ever. UK has always been mostly playstation

@Fiendish-Beaver good third party exclusivity is BS and a it's mainly practiced by Sony

I‘ve got the feeling that the ongoing boom of PS5 is almost over. It will still be successful, no doubt. But those who couldn’t get one for over two years now finally took the chance with these GoWR and HFW bundles, which arrived in February (?). For the masses of PS4 owners though: Economic development is still very uncertain , not a lot of exciting announcements for PS5, many recent PS5 first-party games are available on PS4, and for third-party (FIFA, CoD) PS4 is still very alive. So without a substantial cut in price and size, PS5 will have a harder time now than expected.