Xbox’s Future in Console War Looks “Pretty Bright” – Analyst

gamingbolt.com:

While the PS4 and PS5 have both been incredibly successful consoles for Sony, a general sentiment has been that Microsoft has been falling behind in the “console war” since the release of the Xbox One. Industry analysts, however, believe otherwise.

Mat Piscatella, an analyst with NPD, spoke about the state of Xbox in an interview with GamesRadar, especially in comparison with PlayStation, in terms of sales.

Interestingly, Piscatella points out that Microsoft’s gaming division has been doing quite well, even if one were to look at the sales charts of Sony’s consoles, since quite a few Xbox games are also available on the PS5. This plays into Microsoft’s long-term strategy of releasing Xbox games on other platforms, with the most recent example being Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

“If you look at what’s going on now in the sales, you look at like the PlayStation sales chart, you see a lot of Microsoft on there,” said Piscatella. “And the more that they can broaden the appeal of their products, their IP across other platform holders, why not do that?”

Piscatella states that, rather than looking at purely console sales, Xbox should instead focus on bringing more of its titles to other platforms.

“You look towards the future and some of the things they’ve talked about, expanding the reach of the Xbox brand well beyond the Xbox console is a key initiative and they’re executing on that,” said Piscatella, talking about Xbox’s current strategy.

“You look at their results in their earnings reports, and you go, okay, that looks pretty darn good, even though they recognize that console sales themselves are lagging for them. You look at it that way and the future is actually looking pretty bright, although, yeah, it’s been a rocky couple of years for sure.”

The fact that Xbox also places quite a bit of emphasis on its Game Pass subscription service means that the company is treating Xbox as more of an ecosystem than just console hardware, according to Piscatella.

“I think