After hinting that the Xbox One is experiencing "record breaking sales," Microsoft finally came out today and announced the total number of units sold since launch 18 days ago.
More than two million consoles sold through to consumers worldwide. That's an average of 111,111 units sold per day, a record-setting pace for Xbox, Microsoft said. Furthermore, over 83 million hours have been spent playing games, watching TV and fiddling with appson Xbox One since its launch on November 22.
“We continue to be humbled and overwhelmed by the positive response from our fans," Microsoft's VP of strategy and marketing Yusuf Mehdi said. "We are thrilled to see sales of Xbox One on a record-setting pace, with over 2 million Xbox One consoles in homes around the world."
The Xbox One is currently available in 13 markets, but is sold out at most retailers due to insanely high demand. At peak, over 1,000 Xbox One unts were sold per minute on Amazon.com, the online retailer revealed.
Comparitively, the PlayStation 4 has sold over 2.1 million units worldwide, as of December 1. It launched in North America on December 15th where it went on to sell over one million units in 24 hours. It launched in Europe and Australasia on November 29th, adding an additional 700,000 units sold as of December 1st. In total, the PS4 is available in 32 countries — 19 more than Xbox One.
Say what you want about Microsoft's blunders early on, but it looks like they've been able to recover from some early bad publicity. While the PS4 seems to be outselling the Xbox One, I don't think it's nearly by a margin many thought it would be. Prior to the Xbox One's launch, many expected doom and gloom for Microsoft's next-gen console, but it's nice to see sales going strong. Let's remember though, the success of each console is determined by much more than initial launch sales. As we learned with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, it's a long road ahead.
