According to a report by the NPD group the PS4 was top of the US sales charts for the month of January.Although the full monthly report is due next week both Sony and Microsoft have released preliminary statements regarding their initial performance.
Microsoft said that this was the best January ever for the Xbox One and it became the only console in this generation to enjoy year-on-year growth during the month. The time spent on playing Xbox One games saw an impressive 21% increase year-on-year.
This is pretty good from Microsoft’s perspective considering the fact that there weren’t any major Xbox One exclusives in January; the hottest game to come out in the month was the multiplatform Resident Evil 7. We can see the two giants head to head in this respect as well with the PS4 version of Resident Evil 7 having PlayStation VR support and a long period of demo exclusivity in its favour, while the Xbox One version allowing a cross-buy with Windows 10 PC via Play Anywhere.
Meanwhile not only was the PS4 the best-selling console for the month, according to Sony four of the five best selling games of January were PS4 releases.
The Xbox One had no new or major recent exclusives, and the only PS4 exclusives released in January were Gravity Rush 2 and Yakuza 0, so Sony may be talking about a single-format chart, where the PS4 and Xbox One SKUs of a game are counted separately.
