Sony, Microsoft: Game Console Sales Battle At "New Level"

No question our coverage Thursday surrounding Microsoft's Xbox issuesgenerated a lot of interest. But it was my post about Microsoft's Xbox sales during last week, which included Black Friday, that generated a single, though extremely unusual response from Sony .

Microsoft sent me the company's sales data for last week, showing very strong Xbox 360 sales of 310,000 units. That news alone was enough to raise eyebrows on Wall Street. But Microsoft went an important, competitive step further. It stated that its sales outpaced Sony's PlayStation 3 performance by two to one. Earlier, Sony had reported a strong percentage jump in PlayStation 3 sales, but didn't provide unit figure.

So Thursday evening, I got this email from spokeswoman Kimberly Otzman on behalf of Sony: “It's (Sony's) policy not to disclose our unit sales numbers until NPD numbers are officially released which will be December 13th. However, I can assure you that Microsoft's estimates of our PS3 unit sales numbers are way off and they did not outsell PS3 2:1 during Black Friday week.” Wow, all I can is ouch!

So I called my contact at Microsoft Thursday night for a reaction to, well, the reaction. And here's what she had to say: "Microsoft stands by their 2:1 claim which stems from estimates from retailers. We look forward to see NPD results on 12/13 for the month of November. "

Sheesh. Maybe the two should contact Electronic Arts to see if they could produce a game about all this. Console War 2: Holiday Shopping DeathMatch! I'd just take a small cut.

Questions? Comments? [e-mail]