Xbox One April 2015 Sales

For one month at least, Microsoft got a break from being Sony’s punching bag in the console sales race. GamesBeat reports that NPD’s April sales numbers show the Xbox One outselling the PlayStation 4 last month for the first time since January.

“As the best-selling console in the U.S. in April, fans set record April sales and engagement for Xbox One last month,” Xbox marketing boss Mike Nichols told GamesBeat in response to the April figures. “Xbox One console sales in the U.S. increased 63 percent in April 2015 compared to April 2014, and Xbox Live comparisons showed the number of active global users [Xbox One and Xbox 360] grew 24 percent. We are grateful to our fans for their passion and support and are looking forward to sharing more on the best game lineup in Xbox history at E3.”

Last month’s sales results mean that Microsoft’s next-gen console has outsold Sony’s in the United States for half of the first four months of 2015. No doubt as a result of a temporary price cut, the Xbox One also dominated the hardware sales charts during the crucial retail months of November and December in 2014.

Those wins for Microsoft are not, however, indicative of the bigger picture. The PlayStation 4 has dominated the sales charts in virtually every other month since the platforms went on sale in November 2013, and Sony’s console remains the cumulative hardware sales leader after having outsold the Xbox One at a rate of nearly two to one prior to November 2014. Sony has sold an estimated 20 million PS4s to date, while Microsoft has sold a total of about 12 million Xbox Ones.

On the software front, Minecraft continued to surprise no one with its seemingly everlasting popularity. Mojang’s world-building sim was the fourth-best-selling piece of software in April.

Sources: GamesBeat 1 and 2