According to a press release received by Bloomberg, Sony is bragging that the Playstation 4 outsold the Xbox One roughly two-to-one in January in the United States, based on the most recent NPD report. Sony did not include specific sales figures, and aside from the information directly given to the press by the NPD group, most information included in NPD’s reports to subscribers is under a strict non-disclosure agreement.
NPD did announce that spending on video game hardware is up 17% from last January, but with the release of new, significantly more expensive consoles, that doesn’t necessarily translate to more units of hardware sold.
Microsoft has yet to announce anything about their sales figures for January. Their last report was about a month ago, claiming 908,000 Xbox Ones and 643,000 Xbox 360s sold in December, for first and third place on the sales charts.
In spite of the good news for Sony, their stock closed at a 1.5% loss following the announcement. This could be a matter of failing to meet heightened expectations, or simply a matter of traders selling on good news and buying on bad news.
The NPD group is one of the leading market research organizations in the United States, providing sales statistics for everything from food to fashion to video games. They obtain thorough sales data from many retail clients and partners, and while their figures aren’t comprehensive, they use a series of algorithms to extrapolate estimated sales data for the retailers for whom they don’t have direct access to sales figures. NPD’s sales statistics typically only cover sales within the United States.
