The PlayStation 4 sales phenomenon isn't isolated to just the United States and the United Kingdom; the console has been selling like crazy in various countries, one of which includes Spain. A new tweet from IGN has indicated that the PlayStation 4 has managed to move 360,000 units and has moved seven times more units than the Xbox One.
PlayStation Lifestyle picked up the news from the Spanish IGN Twitter feed, where it's being reported that Spain has crossed the 360,000 SKU sold mark for PS4 units. The details are sketchy but this is working under the assumption of total sales and not monthly sales.
Even still, that would mean the Xbox One is barely pushing 51,000 SKUs sold in Spain. That's pretty horrifying if true. Some of the users on the Twitter feed seemed to have an answer as to why there was a disparity between the two consoles, with one user writing...
This kind of sentiment mirrors lots of global reactions about the Xbox One and the PS4, dating back to the initial reveal of Microsoft's console on May 21st, 2013.
The summer months of 2013 saw gamers up in arms, battling it out across the interwebs with Microsoft, as the fight for consumer rights and the preservation of the First Sale Doctrine were put to the ultimate test. Gamers eventually won out, but not without putting a really bad taste in the mouths of everyone else out there who even considered buying an Xbox One. The global sales trends for the Xbox One have been quite telling of the consumer perception that people have with Microsoft's console.
At the same time, this kind of news isn't completely unlikely. Previous tallies of world sales data has never actually been in favor of the Xbox One. Over in Japan the PS4 launched to the tune of nearly half-a-million units (according to CVG), where-as the Xbox One came out and sputtered at far less than 50,000 units. Over in Germany the PS4 leads the Xbox One by more than three times, and now we have stats showing that Spain is also heavily in the camp of Sony.
The only place where the Xbox One seems to have been able to capture good market strength on a small number of shipped units is China. Over in the great people's republic, Microsoft actually managed to move 100,000 SKUs in the first week of the console being on sale.
Of course, the reality of the situation is simply that people prefer PlayStation this time around. Phil Spencer, the head of the Xbox division, has a long and hard road ahead of him to fix the image of the brand that was so badly damaged by Don Mattrick, the executive that he preceded him.
I doubt that Microsoft will recover the Xbox brand before 2014 is out. My guess is that things won't truly pick up until more exclusives are revealed, the console continues to expand its OS features, more themes and customization are added to the overall functionality, and Microsoft shows a genuine interest in proliferating game culture and not just cashing in on the industry boom.
