Sony now once again has more games on the PlayStation Store's best-sellers list than Microsoft does.
Once Microsoft purchased Activision for $70 billion, Xbox became an overnight powerhouse. Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard King, Bethesda/ZeniMax, and the myriad of teams under its Xbox Game Studios banner. That's a lot of IPs and franchises--Microsoft now casts one of the widest nets in gaming.
Buying ABK wasn't enough--Microsoft also needed to break exclusivity and bring its first-party games to competing platforms so it can "use what Sony has" to sell games. As a result of these expansion efforts, Microsoft took over the U.S. PlayStation Store top-sellers charts simply by virtue of its size.
For at least 18 days in a row, Microsoft has had more games than Sony on the PlayStation Store's top 25 best-selling games charts in the United States. I started tracking PS Store data in April 17, and yesterday, May 6, was the first time that Sony broke Microsoft's streak.
Sony had 6 games on the PS Store's best-sellers list as compared to Microsoft's 5 games.
So what does this tell us, exactly? The trends highlight one of Microsoft's telegraphed core goals with the acquisition--selling more games on more platforms than ever before. The FTC might've dropped their case if they had known just how non-exclusive Xbox would become, however, these charts do also reflect Microsoft's size and reach in the games industry.
With the buyouts of Activision Blizzard King and ZeniMax, Microsoft now has over a dozen billion-dollar game franchises, and some, like Call of Duty, have made over $33 billion in lifetime revenue.
The recent surge in Xbox game popularity also highlights one of Microsoft's other levers: Transmedia. The Fallout TV show was so successful that everyone wanted to play the games again, and Microsoft was ready to capitalize on this endeavor with some well-timed sales of Fallout games.
