Xbox One sales double after removal of Kinect, but the PS4 is still miles ahead

 In a rather unsurprising case of “we told you so,” Microsoft says Xbox One sales have doubled since the arrival of the $400 Kinect-free Xbox One in June. The press release is infuriatingly slim on other important details, though, such as how man
y Xbox One consoles Microsoft actually sold, and — more importantly — how the Xbox One is faring in comparison to the PS4. Still, let’s not Microsoft’s coyness get in the way — let’s do our best to tease the figures apart, and look at some figures from some other sources, to see just how the Xbox One is doing.

First, the official figures from Microsoft. The $400 Kinect-free Xbox One was first offered in the US on June 9. Since then, sales have “more than doubled” compared to sales in May.

The question is, how many Xbox Ones did Microsoft sell in May? And was the boost in sales entirely down to the removal of Kinect, or are there other factors at play?

Historical PS3 unit sales: Nov 11, 2006 to Apr 28, 2007 [Click to enlarge]

Looking back through historical data from VGChartz, there doesn’t seem to be a big variation in console sales in May and June. This year there was a bump for both Xbox One and PS4 due to the release of Watch Dogs at the end of May, but we’re only talking a few percentage points. In general, as we covered in an in-depth feature a couple of months ago, console sales are mostly flat except for the holiday season, with big game releases only generating small peaks in sales.The sales data from VGChartz does show a very clear boost in sales for the Xbox One following the release of the $400 Kinect-free version, however. While Xbox One was generally selling around 35,000 units per week in May, it has been at 60,000+ since the introduction of the $400 bundle on June 9. The PS4, on the other hand, has been sitting at around 100,000 units per week for a long time.

Another possibility is that, having seen all of the upcoming game releases at Microsoft’s E3 conference, lots of consumers finally decided to jump in and buy an Xbox One. If that was the case, though, we would’ve expected to see a similar jump in PS4 sales — but there hasn’t been one.

Worldwide hardware sales to date for the PS4 and Xbox One (and other less important consoles). [Image credit: VGChartz]

It would appear that the removal of Kinect really did boost Xbox One sales considerably. Is that really a surprise, though? I mean, if you had to choose between spending $500 or $400 on a new game console, with Kinect being the only real differentiating factor, which would you choose? It’s also important to remember that most potential consumers will have been bombarded for the last 12 months with stories about the PS4 having considerably better hardware, too — plus, Microsoft’s flip-flopping on important Xbox One policies hardly inspired confidence.

Anyway, it’s good to see Xbox One sales picking up pace. To be honest, Microsoft didn’t have a whole lot of choice: While the consoles were fairly close up until the end of 2013, the continued strong sales from the Sony camp puts the current totals at around 8.4 million for the PS4 vs. 4.8 million for the Xbox One. Closing the weekly deficit from ~60,000 units to ~30,000 units will certainly help the Xbox One, but it’s obviously not the solution if Microsoft wants to be the proud owner of the dominant eighth-generation game console.