14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group is delivering its sales figures for the month of July in the United States and the PlayStation 4 from Sony once again managed to outsell the Xbox One from Microsoft for a seventh straight month, a performance that underlines the level of competition linked to the new generation of home consoles.
Actual numbers of units delivered to players have not been announced but it seems that the lead of the PS4 is at the moment holding steady, despite the fact that the price of the rival device has been slashed in June.
Sony recently announced that its new platform has managed to get past the 10 million mark in overall sales and the most recent official update from Microsoft, in April, only said that the device was over the 5 million milestone.
Sales of the PlayStation 4 plus those of the PS3 have managed to overtake, in terms of overall spending, those of the Xbox One combined with the 360, according to data quoted by NeoGAF.
Microsoft has not talked about the performance of its home consoles for the month of July in great detail and claims that the Xbox One is continuing to see strong momentum and will soon increase its overall sales based on superior quality.
The NPD Group report for July says that overall industry spending was up 16 percent when compared to the same period of 2013 and has managed to reach 514.3 million dollars (383 million Euro).
For hardware the increase is even more important and has reached 100% and at the moment the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are outperforming their older cousins by more than 80 percent.
Both Sony and Microsoft are saying that they will deliver more bundles and more special offers for the two devices in the run up to Christmas in order to improve sales.
For the Xbox One a big change might come in September, when the device launches on a number of important secondary markets, including the big ones in China and India.
But Microsoft does not yet have a clear plan to take back the top position in the United States, where it tended to dominate sales during the previous hardware generation.
Rumors recently surfaced about another price cut which might bring the price down again in order to make the device more attractive to potential customers.
Meanwhile Sony is preparing to launch a 2.0 firmware for the PS4 that includes a range of new features.