Following Thursday’s announcement from Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) that it had sold 7 million units of its PlayStation 4 video game console, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) said that it had sold 5 million units of the Xbox One since the product launched in November. Microsoft also said that Titanfall was the best-selling game in the month of March, according to research firm NPD Group.

The Xbox One has consistently trailed the PlayStation 4 since both products hit the market in November. By February, the PS4 had built up a 2 million-unit lead on the Xbox One, and that has not changed even after Microsoft added the Titanfall game as a package deal with the new console. The package sold for the same $499 selling price as the console alone had, effectively dropping the console price to $399, identical with the selling price of the PS4.

Some other Xbox One data points from the NPD Group cited by Microsoft:

• Xbox One sold 311,000 units in March in the United States, topping Xbox 360 sales by 60% at the same point in time.
• An average of 2.9 games are sold for each Xbox One console sold.
• Combined March sales came to 4.1 million games for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms, for a total market share of 49% of all software sales.

According to Microsoft, Xbox One users spend an average of five hours a day using the console and that owners collectively have spent more than 1 billion hours with games and apps on the device.

About all Microsoft can really claim for the month of March is that the Xbox One did not lose ground in the sales race with the PS4. That is what $31 million in free Titanfall software will buy. Microsoft can certainly afford the subsidy, but the company must be disappointed at being unable to close the gap on the PS4. Maybe a steeper discount would help?

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