When Microsoft was beating PlayStation 3 with Xbox 360, Sony decided not to share sales numbers anymore. Petty. But Microsoft did exactly the same thing this generation, and when PlayStation 4 bested Xbox One, Sony started sharing numbers again and Microsoft removed them. Thanks to this, we know how many consoles Sony have sold, but we have to rely on guesstimates for Xbox One.
Unfortunately, we should not expect this to change this new generation either, regardless if Microsoft manages to outsell Sony. In an interview with The Guardian, the Xbox boss Phil Spencer explains that they only talk about the Xbox eco system from now on, as the number of players is what matters with their shared formats (so far Android, PC and Xbox) and subscriptions:
"I know it seems manipulative and I'll apologise for that, but I don't want my team's focus on [console sales]. The primary outcome of all the work that we do is how many players we see, and how often they play. That is what drives Xbox."
Spencer continues by explaining that the competition has changed and says he will never share the sales number even if they are really good:
"I can promise you that I won't do that. In the last year we've had Google and Amazon and now Facebook announcing they're coming into our gaming space. I'm not gonna go compete with their numbers based on how many Xbox Series X I've sold. [Google] is never gonna talk about how many Chromecast Pros they sold. They're gonna talk about how many players they have."
He sums it up by saying that measuring sold consoles, might make Microsoft lose focus as they have so many other ways to play their games:
"If I start to highlight something else, both publicly and internally, it changes our focus. Things that lack backwards compatibility become less interesting. Putting our games on PC becomes a reason that somebody doesn't have to go and buy an Xbox Series X.
I'll hold fast to this. We publicly disclose player numbers. That's the thing I want us to be driven by, not how many individual pieces of plastic did we sell."