The gaming consoles war: who won in this generation?

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Microsoft and Sony have already given details about their new consoles, a sign that the end is near for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One

This week we are experiencing the biggest event in the videogame industry, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (better known as E3) in Los Angeles, California. There the largest manufacturers and developers of video games meet to make the biggest ads of the year. This occasion was special because a new generation of gaming consoles is coming, an event that shakes the industry every few years.

Leer en español: La guerra de las consolas: ¿quién ganó en esta generación?

Microsoft, to which the Xbox brand belongs, announced the console that will follow the Xbox One. The console, which will have the name of Project Scarlett while it is in development, will be able to run all the games that the Xbox One library has, which means that users can import the games they have already purchased and continue playing them in the new console. The Xbox One remote controls will also continue to be compatible, according to The Verge reports.

"It's a bigger leap than any previous generation (…) from the perspective of the processing capacity, (Scarlett) is four times more powerful than the Xbox One X," Microsoft told Variety. The result of Project Scarlett will be launched next year along with Halo Infinite.

Sony, meanwhile, did not organize a conference for E3, but also took advantage of the situation to reveal details about what would be the PlayStation 5. According to reports of the brand, the PlayStation 5 could play games in 8K and will also be compatible with all the PlayStation 4 games (PS4).

Both consoles are built from the same hardware courtesy of AMD, an eight-core CPU with a graphics processing unit based on the current Radeon Navi. It is expected that both consoles will also be launch next year.

Who won this generation?

Compared to the previous generation, to which the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 belong, this was a relatively short generation. There was little more than 6 years between its initial announcement and the announcement of the next generation, while the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 were almost 9 years in the market without announced replacement.

At that time, Microsoft and Sony had a similar sales rate, because the other main competitor, Nintendo, worked with two consoles, the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Wii U.

Analyzing the total sales, revealed in January of this year, there is a clear winner: PlayStation. The fourth Sony console sold 91.6 million units, and, according to Forbes, could well break the barrier of 100 million in recent years as a next-generation console.

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This means that the PlayStation 4 sold 30 million units more than its predecessor, the PlayStation 3, which is considered by industry analysts as a relative commercial failure. However, it is still far behind the 105 million units sold from the original PlayStation and even further compared to the 155 million sold by the PlayStation 2. Under the most ambitious forecasts, the PlayStation 4 could become the third best-selling console of all time if it were to surpass the 119 million recorded by the Nintendo GameBoy.

Xbox, meanwhile, sold just 42 million units since its launch, respectable figures, but pale in comparison to those recorded by Sony. Everything seems to indicate that the most recent Nintendo console, the Switch, launched just in 2016, could exceed the sales of the Xbox One during this year.

LatinaAmerican Post | Pedro Bernal

Translated from "La guerra de las consolas: ¿quién ganó en esta generación?"