Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian has claimed that sales of PS4 and Xbox One are neck-and-neck.
Microsoft just announced global sales of 2m units for Xbox One throughout the machine’s first 18 days.
That’s roughly the same as PS4’s sales throughout its first 18 days, although it was only available in North America for its first two weeks.
“While many industry forecasts expected Sony’s PS4 to establish an early lead over Xbox One, we continue to expect relatively balanced sales by the end of the launch window,” Sebastian added.
“We note that PS4 tends to see more demand at specialty retail (core gamer focus) with the Xbox One getting a higher profile at big box retailers.”
“As such, we believe each platform is on track to meet our high-end sales forecast of 3m units by the end of 2013, and 5-6m units cumulatively by the end of Q1.”
Sebastian goes on to predict that NPD will tomorrow announce November sales of 1.3-1.4m for PS4 in the US and 800-900k for Xbox One, which came out a week later in the territory.
General sales trends from other data, however, tend to suggest that PS4 sales are tracking 66 per cent ahead of Xbox One.