Microsoft announced this morning that it has sold two million shiny new Xbox Ones. If your immediate reaction, dear Kotaku reader, is to say something about the PS4, please stop.
Forget asinine console wars and nonsensical company loyalties for a second — both current-next-gen consoles are selling quite well, and that’s good news for anyone who likes video games at all. As the installed base — that’s marketing talk for “number of people” — for each console grows, big third-party publishers will feel more comfortable greenlighting next-gen games. Small developers will have the flexibility to experiment more. Development studios won’t have to worry as much about going “cross-gen” and releasing their games for both current- and next-gen systems, which means we’ll see more games that really take advantage of what these new machines can do. (More enemies! Higher resolutions! Better dog AI!)
So let’s all take a moment to celebrate the good news that both of these consoles seem to be doing well. Let’s hope that the Wii U picks up steam soon too. Healthy competition is healthiest for gamers.
Comments
33 responses to “Microsoft Sells Two Million Xbox Ones, Which Is Good News For Everyone”
Great news, still a mighty long dry patch of games coming up though 🙁
Lots of games coming out between January and March for xbox one and 360
It’s weird, the two things I’m most excited for are the Evil Within and the release of the 2 extra characters and Arcade mode on Killer Instinct… and I don’t normally play fighters at all.
Next year will be the best year for games, Evil within looks amazing
PSFAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWW
‘Cmon Titanfall and self published indie games!
I love that the author tries to abate console wars almost straight away! Also, this is great news. Both consoles are fantastic, and it’s good to see they are both OWNING it
Yeah it is great news both re doing well. I would also like to this the WiiU doing well.
I don’t know if its anything to go by but i tried to pick up the new Mario3D on wiiU today and 5 stores are out of stock. they will have more this week but that must mean something right?
Great news. Made even more amazing by the fact that MS was a PR disaster for the last 9 months.
Proof that gamers on the Internet by and large are full of shit. Everybody expected this to fail and it hasn’t.
In my opinion I never believed the majority of the people complaining were going to switch over. At the end of the day you go where your friends go. I play on ps3/pc and I never thought about getting an xbone. I will down the line when its cheaper and there are a stack of exclusives I want to play. The people who play CoD the majority of the time were never going to go and swap to the ps4.
If MS hadn’t backflipped, it quite possibly would have been a very different story.
Only because of that enormous backpedalling.
This is why I was pissed MS backed away from their original DRM. It was a bunch of whiners complaining about needing internet access…..ON INTERNET FORUMS.
Really wanted the original Xbox One. Hopefully we can get it back at some point.
Exactly. I game on PC as well Xbox One & PS4 and I have no issues with a once only activation on consoles. You can’t have one segment of the market getting away with trade ins and the other not. It will be back one day on both consoles.
Anyone that thinks Sony didn’t share MS’s plan for DRM is kidding themselves. They just didn’t open their mouths first…
Sony’s entire marketing campaing for PS4 was:
– Wait for Microsoft to announce something
– Wait for reaction to said announcement
– Announce something better if positive
– Announce the opposite if negative
It’s more proof that Microsoft fans have very short memories…
This is great news. I’m so excited about this generation!
Well if xbone sells 2 million and PS4 sells 2 million (or what ever) then 3rd party developers will see a market of 4 million. Exclusives aside, they share a market and the bigger the ‘pool’ of consumers the more games we are likely to get.
Not to mention this is an install base of active gamers who purchased their console recently and are looking for games. The PS3 and 360 install base includes a shit-tonne of hardware failures on both sides, a whole heap of free promo consoles that have never had a game installed (especially PS3 with the bravia promo), and owners who have become dis-interested and stopped using their consoles years ago.
That’s a really insightful comment. I bet you’re on the money with that one.
So – has it outsold the Wii U?
no, still got about 2 million to go, but the vita has out sold the wiiu
I only come on these articles to watch the fanboys fight it out in the comments. This whole maturity thing is well and good but it’s ruining the entertainment value of the site for me.
Where are the “Wobblestation” or “M$” comments? Cmon guys! lets have a little <> blows!
inb4 pc master race posts commence.
Given the subpar release line up its really an incredible feat for both consoles to be selling the numbers they currently are. It will be interesting to see just how much sales for both spike when games like infamous, titanfall and watch dogs come out.
This is great news for the apparently struggling gaming industry. You always hear doom and gloom forecasts but the fact that MS (and most likely Sony) are selling more than any other console launch proves that gaming is growing. CEEEEELEBRATE GOOD TIME C’MON!
Proud to be 1 of those 2 million and loving it, also spartan ops next week….my first arcade game :’)
Good stuff for both them systems, and good stuff for other systems that will benefit as a result of all the cross platform development that’s going to happen now.
My brother is still waiting, a week later, for his promised ‘2 day’ replacement of his dead XB1. Wait times are still hours on the support line trying to chase this.
Hopefully they will lift their game on this.
they’re pretty cheap so they sell
While the sales of both consoles are impressive, it’s kind of the expected norm. In a few months time, when Microsoft and Sony have started getting on top of their supply and the initial enthusiasm has died down will be when we start to see what the market is going to do.
First off I just want to say I’m a PC Gamer, so I don’t want to take sides here, but can someone please tell me what the point of the xbone is? Once you put game exclusivity aside, what’s the point? It has (slightly) less power than the PS4 resulting in lower resolution games (not even 1080, common), it’s huge and bulky, and weighs more, is almost completely covered in fans and vents, and has a giant power brick to go with it, and on top of all that it costs MORE than the PS4… WHY?! Why…
Maybe it’s built in TV feature (which doesn’t even work down here mind you) might have potential, but I just don’t understand the point :S
This is good – but I have to wonder when selling this many consoles so quickly is going to mean in the long term.
We’re talking about, what, a 3-5 year lifespan for a games console (compared to a PC which might be upgraded in some small way within a year) – and both these networks need to support and continually grow both ecosystems.
The way I see it, they’re going to have far less ongoing capital on both sides to do so, because most people will already own the console.
Personally i’m just glad PS4 added a subscription charge for this very reason – can you imagine how unplayable servers with potentially millions of people on, that were funded entirely by Sony, would have been after 2 years? Welcome to hell.