Microsoft on February: hollow victory for Sony, no Blu-ray for 360

The seventh-gen console war seems to have taken a sharp turn towards Sony‘s favor for February. Not only did Blu-ray finally win over HD DVD, but the PlayStation 3 also outsold the Xbox 360 for the second month in a row. Sony’s pretty stoked about it, but what does Microsoft have to say? The answer to that and more in the full article.

 

Following the sales results for February, courtesy of the NPD Group, the latest news that’s making waves is that the Sony PlayStation 3 outsold Microsoft’s Xbox 360 for the second month in a row. Sony’s pretty stoked, but what does Microsoft have to say about it?

True to form, Microsoft isn’t worried about the whole thing, according to a recent interview with Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the Xbox 360. According to him, Microsoft expected the PlayStation 3 to outsell the Xbox 360 for February.

He scratches Sony‘s victory off to the current Xbox 360 shortage, which he expects to be over before April for Grand Theft Auto 4‘s release. With that reasoning, he says that February was a “hollow victory for Sony” since “the competition didn’t show up [in February].”

As for HD DVD’s demise to Blu-ray, Greenberg expresses they they aren’t worried about it at all either, and restates that there are no plans for the Xbox 360 to adopt the prevailing format. With that, he takes a few jabs at Sony, saying that:

WeÂ’ll look at the sales data as closely as anybody else, but we donÂ’t expect [Blu-rayÂ’s win] to give a boost to PS3 sales, and we donÂ’t expect it to impact our sales. Frankly, we think itÂ’s the games that sell the consoles.

People bought Xbox 360s this holiday for Halo 3 and BioShock and Mass Effect and Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They werenÂ’t buying an Xbox to watch “300.” If people are buying your video game system to watch movies, that should be a red flag for your business.

Via Next Generation