Around 60 million PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles have been sold to date, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has revealed. This is an increase of five million from his estimate of 55 million console sales at the end of last year, GameSpot reports.
Jorgensen revealed the number while speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference today while discussing the topic of virtual reality. While the current generation consoles have proved popular, VR still has a small user-base and as such EA is not yet prepared to jump into the VR space.
The executive previously said that for EA or a similar company to spend $50-$100 million to build a AAA VR experience, the market would need to be comparable to that of consoles. Describing the console market today as “large,” Jorgensen said EA estimates there are 60 million PS4 and Xbox One systems out there and more than 150 million PS3 and Xbox 360 systems.
While EA will not commit to full priced games for VR, the company is working on smaller “vignette-style” titles which have not yet been announced. He said that if VR does take off, EA will be well positioned to jump into the space because of its consolidated development processes and game engines.
Sony announced in early January that PS4 sales stood at 35.9 million, assuming sales of the console now stand closer to 40 million, that means the PS4 is still significantly ahead of the 20 or so million Xbox One systems Microsoft has sold. Microsoft, for its part, no longer releases sales figures relying instead on data such as user metrics and Xbox Live subscriptions.
Jorgensen also revealed during the presentation that full-game downloads account for 25 percent of all EA game sales. The figures varies by game and location, as well as factors such as the availability of cashless transaction options and bandwidth speed.
During the conference, Jorgensen also confirmed that Mass Effect Andromeda will be released during EA’s Q4, meaning some point between January 1st, 2017 and March 31st, 2017.
