EA suggests that Microsoft sold around 30 million Xbox One consoles by the end of 2017

2 min. read

Updated on May 11, 2018

updated on May 11, 2018

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Update: Microsoft has responded to these estimated sales figures in a statement sent to Variety. According to a spokesperson from the company, these numbers are inaccurate, though they did not specify by what margins or how they were inaccurate.

“The projections are inaccurate,” a spokesperson told Variety. “Regardless, we are focused on delivering amazing gaming experiences to players on all devices and engagement is our measure of progress. We just announced a record start to the year with Xbox Live monthly active users up 13% to 59 million.”

Original: Microsoft doesn’t reveal Xbox One unit sales anymore, but that doesn’t stop rough estimates from slipping out one way or another. During EA’s Q4 FY 18 earnings call yesterday, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen seems to have revealed how many Xbox One consoles were out in the wild as of the end of last year.

“Turning to our expectations for fiscal 2019, we expect sales of current-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony to continue to be strong, with the installed base growing to 130 million consoles by the end of calendar 2018 from 103 million at the end of calendar 2017,” Jorgensen said.

He didn’t specify the breakdown between systems, but all it takes is some simple math when Sony reveals their own numbers for the PlayStation 4. Back in January 2018, Sony stated that the PlayStation 4 reached 73.6 million unit sales worldwide. If we take Jorgensen’s data of 103 million total console sales between the two systems by the end of 2017, we can estimate that Microsoft sold 29.4 million Xbox Ones.

Despite selling well below half of Sony’s numbers, Microsoft’s Xbox business isn’t as doom and gloom as some would make it appear. The company released the highly successful Xbox One X earlier last November, and has increasingly pushed subscription services like Xbox Game Pass to attract more players into the Xbox ecosystem.

E3 2018 is just around the corner, so we’ll see what Xbox has in store for us in the near future.