How PS4 is Doing Better Than Xbox One

Ever since the original Xbox and PlayStation came out in the early 2000's there has always been the battle between groups of friends on which one to buy. Most recently the Xbox One and PS4 came out in November of 2013 and only seven days apart from each other, with PS4 coming out first. However there interesting thing is that PS4 has higher sales by about 50% and Sony spends less money are marketing than Microsoft does. So how is Sony doing better? Well it all comes down to the way that Sony markets their product as a console for hardcore gamers. The strive to give gamers the best gaming experience while Microsoft focuses on the Xbox One as a living room necessity. Here are two commercials that are from the original release of both systems, first let us examine the PS4 commercial.

If we examine this PS4 commercial we can clearly see that all they focus in is the greatness of games. Sony focused on showing us what games are awaiting us once the system launches. As we can clearly see Sony is purely focusing on the aspect of gaming on their system and not any other features of the PS4. 

Taking a look at the Xbox commercial we can see that Microsoft made the console for everyone to us, and focused on our wants. One of the key phrases that stuck out at me was that “you will have a relationship with your T.V.” Now to the ordinary person they might not have any idea what this means. However Xbox has this thing called Kinect and it allows us to use voice and hand commands to work the Xbox. Another interesting point they bring up is that they are using all of this data to boost our entertainment. Note that they say entertainment and not gaming. Microsoft wanted to focus on entertainment for the whole family, not just the hardcore gamer.

So how did all of this play out in the long run? Well there is about 55 million console worldwide and the PS4 makes up about 35.9 million of them. That leaves a measly 19 million Xbox Ones out there. When we look at marketing costs a year after the consoles release I found out that Microsoft spent around 47 million and Sony only about 30 million. How did Sony do so much better than Microsoft? I honestly think that it all comes down to how Sony marketed their product. There are more hardcore gamers out there than families that want an entertainment system. It is very easy just to pick up Netflix, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire as an entertainment program. I think if Microsoft targeted the hardcore gamers like Sony did than they would have had a better shot.