Well keep in mind, for at some a good chunk of the first half of this year, Series X consoles were more plentiful and IMO that directly contributed to MS getting increases in total sales in NA, UK and other regions. I think it was Series X being more available as to why they were able to lead in sales in NA for the last three quarters of their 2021 FY (IIRC MS's starts in July and Sony's starts in April).
However, for the first quarter of their FY 2022, I think there was a statement from Microsoft saying they expect hardware sales to be more or less flat compared to Q1 of FY 2021. I don't know what their hardware sales were for that period last year, maybe you or someone else does though. I also think that's partly due to them expecting to have less Series X units, and we're already seeing them do free game deals with Series S in territories like NA starting in August, which IMO are to drive demand for that system since it's probably now going to be the absolute majority of Series consoles on shelves for this quarter and MS's Q2 for FY 2022.
So them doing 4 million for Jan - June 2022 might not be that hard to believe tbh. That's when there was a very noticeable increase of Series X units in the distribution channels. Whether that's tied to the "chip priority" rumors I don't know; if those rumors were ever true, then more Series X units during that period for customers was just a side benefit from earlier priority MS paid in early 2021 for Series X silicon to put in Azure clusters, they finished kitting out the Azure clusters with Series X chips sometime last summer.
Do we have Sony's Jan-June 2022 numbers to compare?
Yeah, and that's the main benefit of getting these data reports out there; they're helping us put a cap on the realistic range and it's probably somewhere between 13.5 million to 14 million LTD for Xbox Series at current point in time (or at least up to June - July; were the Ampere numbers for up to June, July, or August?).
I think your second number range could work, I would just need to know what Sony's numbers were for the January - June period in 2022. We know they were tracking behind their own targets due to shortages, but I do think they still managed at least 3.5 million. I need to check their quarterly statements again (or hopefully, someone else has them on record to pull up easily).
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