For seven consecutive months now, the PlayStation 4 has dominated the sales charts. Sony announced at Gamescom this week that PS4 sales have surpassed 10 million units sold through to consumers, another huge milestone for the nine-month-old console and an indication that sales won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Even with a fairly limited selection of games, PS4 also took the top spot in software, accounting for more than half of all new generation game sales with The Last of Us Remastered coming out on top.
Sony isn’t the only winner though. According to the The NPD Group’s Liam Callahan, “hardware sales doubled in July 2014 (vs. July 2013), stemming from growth in eighth generation console sales which offset declines in seventh generation console and portable hardware.”
Even with declining software sales in the month of July, the massive spike in PS4 and Xbox One sales has kept the industry churning along. Interestingly, this is the first year we’ve gone without a college football game since 1993, which the NPD believes contributed heavily to the decline.
“July is typically a quiet month for software sales, representing about 5 percent of annual sales. Typically, NCAA Football launches in July and often ranks as the top game. As that title is no longer being produced, new launch sales declined steeply by close to 70 percent in July 2014,” says Callahan.
Anyone looking for a massive shift in momentum is going to have to wait a little longer — August and September will both be relatively slow months for game releases — but once the console exclusives begin to land in October, Microsoft may have a chance to storm back.
