EA exec: MS catching up to Sony in the next-gen race

Author: by Christian Nutt, Alex Wawro

"Clearly Sony has jumped out to a lead with a great console and I think a great pricing strategy," says EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, but "Microsoft is catching up quickly" in the company's estimation. Those remarks come from Jorgensen's talk at the UBS Global Technology Conference, which EA streamed. They come as Sony says it has a 2:1 lead on Xbox One with the PlayStation 4, and Microsoft announces that it's soon to cross the 10 million shipped mark for its console -- and that sales have tripled in the immediate aftermath of a $50 price cut. Jorgensen says that the price drop has given Microsoft a big leg up: "... pricing actions that are taking place, particularly during this Christmas season, driven by Microsoft, around reduction plus a lot of bundled software, I think will continue to pull the consumer into the new consoles." He estimates that after the holiday, the installed base for next-gen consoles will be "north of 25 million."