Well, that was quick. Microsoft is officially celebrating the biggest launch in its gaming history, having sold more than a million consoles in less than twenty-four hours on the market.
There are still a few hours of selling time left on the west coast, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from releasing the number, as it eclipses the 326,000 Xbox 360s the company sold in its first week on the market back in 2006.
Granted, Microsoft hasn’t stated whether the million unit figure is strictly North American sales (Sony sold a million PS4s in the US and Canada in the first 24 hours, also), but either way, it’s a great start for a console that comes out a hundred dollars more expensive than its competitor. It’s also quite refreshing to see that maybe gaming isn’t as volatile as people might believe following the fiasco of messaging and online-only requirements from E3 this year.
Microsoft also released some cool details about the games that gamers have been playing in the first day of launch:
- Over 60 million zombies have been killed in Dead Rising 3
- Over 3.6 million miles driven in Forza Motorsport 5
- Over 7.1 million combos in Killer Instinct
- Over 8.5 million enemies defeated in Ryse: Son of Rome
It is already shaping up to be a massive holiday season for the two big new heavyweights in the gaming arena. It’ll be interesting to see how big the numbers get going into the holidays not only for consoles, but for individual titles as well. Stay tuned, this is set to be a big draw.
Update #1 – While it’s still unclear if Microsoft sold one million consoles in North America or globally, we have to assume they meant globally, or they’d have mentioned the fact that they sold a million in North America, and countless more all over the rest of the world. Sony, however, only release the PlayStation 4 in the US and Canada last week, so those numbers are substantial, but we’ll see how future sales figures come out.