Xbox Sales Show No Lift as PS5 Rises on Wolverine
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella says Xbox's recent moves have not had a positive effect on sales. He based that view on US sales and engagement data, and he said it is hard to find any signs of positivity for Xbox right now, according to GameSpot.
Piscatella said Xbox's disc-to-digital program, which gives players digital copies of physical discs, has not changed the sales trend for new physical games. He also said that making Gears of War: E-Day exclusive to Xbox has not led to more Xbox hardware sales. The game is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Game Pass and Steam.
Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma has set out a plan to respond. She created a unit called XP to take Xbox games into film, TV, consumer products, sponsorships and live events. She has also set a goal for every Xbox studio to return to growth in players and revenue by the end of the fiscal year ending June 2027.
A second target covers profit. Sharma wants Xbox to match Sony and Nintendo on profit margins by 2027, and to beat them by mid-2030. A profit margin is the share of revenue a company keeps as profit. CNBC reports that Xbox currently runs at about 3%, compared with 9.9% for PlayStation and 16% for Nintendo.
On the PlayStation side, the picture looks different. Piscatella told The Game Business that PS5 sales jumped in September, lifted by Marvel's Wolverine, a Sony game made by Insomniac. US PS5 revenue rose 43% year-over-year in September, and UK PS5 unit sales were up 24%.
Piscatella said Wolverine, rather than the Netflix reveal of GTA 6, was the main sales driver for Sony that month. The Wolverine DualSense controller was the bestselling accessory of the month, and the Wolverine PS5 console bundle sold out. The week of the GTA 6 reveal brought a "moderate bump" in console sales, which overlapped with the release of NBA 2K27.
October looks different again. UK tracking data from NielsenIQ shows PS5 sales fell 11% year-over-year in October. Xbox hardware sales in the UK fell 22% over the same month.
A quick note on the month's Xbox news: Gears of War: E-Day led the games joining Xbox Game Pass in October, alongside titles including Battlefield 6. Game Pass is Xbox's subscription service, which offers a catalogue of games for a monthly fee.
The sales figures and the Xbox targets point in different directions for now. The first set of Xbox goals falls due in 2027, and the monthly trackers will keep reporting along the way.
