That's quite the spin from resetera. Seems like they've hated PS since before this gen even started, lol.
No; the shift in narrative happened after the Jim Ryan email leak. Which has NOTHING to do with PlayStation as a business or their business performance whatsoever. Also funny they are ignoring that Sony already gave a figure of 32.5 million at their fiscal results early this month (or was it late January?). I'm assuming Ampere's estimates are recent (as in, this month, arguably as of last week at latest), so their PS5 number is actually lower than it should be.
All I know is, the likelihood Xbox were between 16.15 million - 17 million by end of 2022 is more or less confirmed; MAYBE they were slightly above 17 million by that point, but anything above 18 million at the time of Microsoft's earnings call would have been at least somewhat referenced for the PR advantages in optics (MS sure love their optics). So doing about 1.5 million in two months is within ballpark of the annual totals Xbox tend to move in the first few years (~ 9 million), but given MS's own fiscal forecasts for FY 2022 Q3 (of which January & February fall into), I'm thinking they've moved less than 1.5 million in those two months, so they could've been a bit above 17 million as of End of 2022 but still behind 18 million.
Either way you look at it, there's no way to spin this as looking "good" for Xbox when they are losing market share in ROTW and even US & UK, and are being led almost 2:1 by PS5 despite that system having severe shortages that only started to become less severe in H2 2022. But hey, there are a lot of people on Reset who are simply Xbox enablers; they don't want to see the brand genuinely make improvements in the market, they just want to try knocking PlayStation down a few pegs any opportunity they can get.
Because y'know, competition or something like that.
Tinfoil hat time: The timing of this news (same weeks as Microsfts final arguments before the CMA) and the headline pull quotes kind of makes me wondered if this wasnt planend by sony in conjunction with ampere. Hear me out, 18 million seems good for xbox and should be factored into sonys arguments for why microsoft doesnt need activision if its not too late for that. The headline also says sony lost marketshare (albeit not alot.) We see microsft playing the media game all the time, and with this being the most important and favorable so far to sony jurisdiction (The CMA) i could see sony playing the media game to help their case the most.
Or it could just be pure coincidence but i remember last year getting the ampere numbers in like late january. Im probably crazy though
Well you have to consider what figures Ampere are referencing when stating PS "lost market share"; I've actually challenged Ampere's own estimates before, after the report from June last year, when Microsoft started giving some of their own sales totals (as obfuscated combined XBO + Series or percentage references) and they showed a different sales trajectory to what Ampere gave.
And then you have Brad Smith using IDG figures for providing sales ratio between PS and Xbox as of up to last year, being 69:31. Considering we have Sony's official numbers (both for PS4 and PS5 up to that point), and general estimates for XBO sales being at around 50 million, you can just do some extrapolation and see where MS were at by end of last year for Xbox Series.
............
Actually I am just taking another look and yeah, Ampere are going by End of 2022 here. Well, I'm just going to respectfully disagree with their estimates for Xbox on this one. It's either they're right and IDG are wrong, or IDG are right and Ampere is wrong. But they can't BOTH be correct and why would Brad Smith use IDG's numbers in their presentation to the EC last week? He is either reaffirming that IDG's numbers are correct (meaning statistically Xbox could not have been beyond 17 million as of end of 2022), or he just blatantly lied to regulators by downplaying Xbox sold-through numbers?
Or, it could be Ampere's numbers are referencing Xbox sell-in (to retailers) but PlayStation sell-through (to customers), and I like that middle ground vs. saying one source is right and the other is wrong. After all, Microsoft don't provide their own numbers, but it would probably not be too conceivably difficult to get what numbers have been sold to retailers if you're a firm like Ampere.
So that's what I'm going to settle on for now: Ampere's Xbox numbers are sell-in, while their PlayStation numbers are sell-through. Otherwise given Brad Smith's own presentation last week and IDG's numbers, there's no way you can statistically get higher than 17 million for Xbox as of end of last year, unless we also accept XBO has actually sold-through notably less than 50 million units lifetime.
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