"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage against Xbox, but perhaps the split is even worse than that beneath the surface. "
Yeah, no. It has nothing to do with hardware. It’s entirely cultural and they simply don’t have the ability to market it globally.
Go to some random child on the street pretty much anywhere, say “PlayStation”, and it doesn’t matter what language you or they speak, they’ll probably respond positively.
Do the same with “Xbox” and I guarantee you’ll more often than not get a response of confusion or lack of interest.
Outside of NA, Xbox isn’t a particularly popular console brand. Not because of hardware, but purely out of familiarity.
In my experience, Sony has always dominated the market in pretty much every other continent.
They can market the shit out of it, but there’s a sort of “ingrained preference” for PlayStation in most countries, especially non-English speaking ones. It’s a bit cultural, but also very much a “stick with the familiar brand” situation.
Original Xbox didn’t have wide availability. 360 barely had competition with the PS3 where I live (and I expect in many other countries as well), and PS4 continued to outsell Xbox One because it’s just… there. Why move to another brand when you’ve been perfectly fine with the other one for, what, over two decades now?
This is why, when everyone was complaining about CoD, I was always of the opinion that Microsoft has the data and knows that it’s in their best interest to have it continue on PlayStation. They know that they can’t hit PlayStation-level Xbox sales globally, even with a major exclusive like that.
It makes way more sense to keep publishing it on a system that has a built-in audience and guaranteed sales instead of rolling the dice and losing a shit ton of money trying to push a brand that no one’s interested in.
It’s a different situation in America, but most of the world doesn’t care. Like, at all. They’ll always have lower sales numbers.