UK Console Sales Show Xbox in Top Spot

Following on from positive financial news regarding its financial results yesterday, Microsoft officials have announced that the Xbox is currently the number one selling console in the UK, with a 53% market share – up from 49% the previous week. However, stock of the PlayStation 2 console is currently extremely low throughout the country, in anticipation of the newly redesigned version of the hardware, and this may obviously be affecting the make-up of the UK hardware charts. Microsoft now puts world-wide Xbox shipments (not necessarily the number of consoles sold to consumers in stores) at 15.5 million since the format’s launch in 2001. The company’s current aim is to ship more than 20 million units by the end of June 2005, and to expand the number of Xbox Live users to 1.5 million by the same time. By comparison, Sony claims a world-wide shipment of 72 million for the PlayStation 2 console and around 3 million online users. Sony's console sports a much more robust userbase in Japan, where it launched in early 2000 and has many more territory-specific titles. However, the PlayStation 2 has been outselling the Xbox in Western territories since the console's launch, with only price-drop related surges and the last couple of months providing notable exceptions.