14 DAY TRIAL // We know that both the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony have managed to sell 1 million devices in the first 24 hours once they were available on November 15 and November 22, but since then, neither of the two companies has offered any hint of how the two devices are performing.
No comparison is possible at the moment because the Sony platform has been available in North America for two weeks and for just one day in Europe, while the Microsoft console is sold in 13 countries across the world.
Certainly plenty of early adopters do not need to know anything about sales or popularity because they are focused on hardware specifications and on the quality of launch games like Killzone: Shadow Fall and Forza Motorsport 5 to make a purchase decision.
But most of the potential customers for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are not early adopters but players who are interested in picking up a gaming device once they are back in stock in order to use it at least 5 years.
And sales matter because they show the community that is being created around the Sony and the Microsoft platforms, especially given the much improved social elements of the new devices.
Sure, some gamers have clearly defined groups that have already settled on which console they will pick up.
But most players do not have a stable group to game with and they rely on the communities that naturally build around each device.
And that means they need to know sales numbers, broken down by country and period, in order to be sure that when they pay for a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One, they have a solid number of other players who they can interact with if they want to.