The NPD Group has yet to unveil the December, 2017 NPD numbers for North America, but Microsoft’s head of Xbox games marketing, Aaron Greenberg, blew the numerical load through the lid a few days early with a tweet. The tweet indicated that Nintendo won December with the Switch, while Microsoft’s Xbox beat the PS4, meaning that Sony ended the final month of 2017 dead last.
The tweet about the placements came from a response that a user had to Greenberg’s original tweet, where he thanked gamers for supporting the Xbox One throughout the holiday season, which resulted in the highest “Xbox One December console share ever”. The user, Puertorock77, presumed that given that Greenberg didn’t state that Xbox had won December, it means either the PS4 or Nintendo Switch won. Well, he was right. Greenberg replied by informing him that the Switch had won December.
Was trying to just thank folks for supporting us and the incredible success following the launch of Xbox One X. But yes Xbox outsold PS4 in December for Gen 8 consoles according to NPD data, while Nintendo also had a great month as Switch had most overall units.
— Aaron Greenberg ♂️ (@aarongreenberg) January 12, 2018
Greenberg weaseled around the actual statements of saying the Switch won, but simply stated that the Switch had the most units, but that the Xbox beat the PS4. It’s like one of those logic statements where they say Harry beat Jeff in the marathon, but Jerry had the fastest time.
Anyway, this means that after Sony took home a win during the explosive November sales month, they fell all the way down into third place once the price-cut on the PS4 ended. Basically, it means that head-to-head pricing with the Nintendo Switch proves that the PS4 can’t compete.
However, Sony is still winning eighth gen, and the PS4 has already moved nearly 74 million total units since 2013, so it’s not like they have to keep moving big numbers month in and month out. The saturation of the install base means that they should be focusing on software (even though they aren’t).
Nintendo has a very strong 2018 lined up so far, with plenty of popular ports set to arrive on the Switch throughout the year and a few first-party titles to fill in the gaps. If December is any indication of what’s to come, Sony could be in for a rough ride in 2018 going head-to-head against the Switch.
(Main image courtesy of Portal GDA)
