The death of the console has been greatly exaggerated- after the stellar performance of the PS4, and to a lesser extent, the Xbox One, I think that is one point we can all agree on. The rhetoric of the dying console market, spurred in part by the poor showing of the Wii U, was largely premature and hyperbolic.
If you needed any more numbers to stress the point, EA has them. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console sales are 44% higher than PS3 and Xbox 360 sales were at the same point in their lifecycle, EA COO Peter Moore has revealed.
“We’re now 20 months in and if we go like-for-like on the previous generation, we’re up 44% installed base hardware versus where we were Xbox 360, PS3, et al,” he said. “And our attach rate for software is slightly ahead as well. When correcting for full-game downloads, digital full-game downloads and hardware bundles, we’re at 6.1% right now versus 5.9% in the same period in the previous generation.”
Between the two of them, PS4 and Xbox One should achieve a cumulative 49 million units sold by the end of 2015- not a number to sneeze at, considering they’ll only be two years old at that point.
It’s an impressive performance, to be sure- and it demonstrates that the dedicated console market is here to stay, at least for a while.
