Even though we haven’t received updated sales numbers for the PlayStation 4 (7 million+) or Xbox One (5 million+) since April, Eurogamer was able to speak with Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida at E3 about how well the PS4 is doing, where he revealed how the gap between the two consoles seems to be widening:
We were planning, last fiscal year, to sell five million units. That was our expectation. But we did more than seven million – and that was beyond our expectations.
There are shortages in many markets, and there have been complaints. Cameras are sold out, and we are still catching up with demand. It’s amazing. Of course, we didn’t have much anticipation in terms of number of units that Xbox One would sell, but I understand they’re doing very well as well. Because PS4 is doing so well, the gap seems to be widening.
Something that might prevent that gap from widening is the newly introduced Kinect-less Xbox One, which Shuhei always believed would become a reality, just not this soon. “Personally, I was expecting that at some point in the future they’d unbundle Kinect, but I wasn’t expecting it this early,” he said.
One thing Shuhei attributes to the Kinect-less Xbox One is the management change at Microsoft and bringing on Phil Spencer, with Yoshida calling Spencer “a reasonable, smart guy, compared to some other people who used to say some unbelievable things.”
Mirroring what most people have been saying about the PS4 vs Xbox One fight, Yoshida added, “Competition really pushes everyone, Microsoft and us, to do better. I think in the end the consumers will win.”
