This year’s E3 was special. Partly because of the strong dislike for the Xbox One among fans, and partly because of Sony’s cut-throat presentation. And although Xbox One reversed all its rights following this, its not a shock that the majority of consumers were on the side of Sony.
Despite all this, a recent article from Forbes says the PlayStation 4 has around 725,000 pre-orders as of now. Likewise, Xbox One pre-orders are around 525,000. And although I didn’t expect the margin to be worlds apart, this is a lot closer than it should be.
The main issue is that the Xbox One is $100 more expensive than the PS4. While not everyone is aware of the difference, a good portion of these pre-orders are from hardcore gamers. This means that gamers are willing to waste another $100 for Xbox rather than the PS4. Xbox One and PS4 both have excellent hardware, but from the specs shown, they are so similar that it can be hard to argue one from the other.
Maybe its the launch window line-up. Titanfall is a killer app for Microsoft while Killzone: Shadow Fall doesn’t seem to do anything new or unique. Either way, it is surprising at the amount of people pre-ordering the Xbox One despite its previous blunders and the price difference.
If you look at the launch games pre-orders, Microsoft’s love for Call of Duty still dominates with 329,032 for the Xbox One. The PlayStation 4 has around 298,180 pre-orders, so its still a close race. Not to be outdone, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are still neck and neck in sales, with Microsoft recently announcing they had broke 80 million sales on the Xbox 360. According to VGChartz, the PS3 has also broken 80 million units sold.
In the end though, it seems each company is trying to emulate the other one, resulting in very similar consoles.
The Xbox One launches on November 22nd in North America while the PlayStation 4 launches on November 15th. Stick around with CGMagazine as we will be giving you the scoop on each console and their launch titles.
