Ampere Analysis has just released a projection of the gaming industry market in 2022, revealing that Xbox will continue to struggle to catch up with Sony’s PlayStation 5 despite Microsoft’s mind-blowing acquisition of Activision Blizzard a few days ago.
The $68.7 billion deal was the ultimate power move on the green team’s part, sending shock waves across media and even threatening Sony’s integrity, or rather its stock value, in the immediate aftermath. Many industry experts are now genuinely worried that PlayStation will have difficulty matching Microsoft’s insane first-party output. The situation is exacerbated by the latter’s Game Pass service, which essentially gives access to all Xbox games on launch day for a meager monthly subscription fee.
It seems that even despite all of these efforts, the projection for this year’s market still puts Sony in the lead, a staggering two-to-one lead. According to Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis, PlayStation 5 is estimated to sell approximately 18 million units, though Nintendo will maintain its crown with 21 million units of the Switch console sold. Series X|S will lag behind with only a combined 9 million units unless Microsoft decides to one-up itself in terms of all the hype Xbox is currently generating.
Harding-Rolls further confirms that the availability of all these consoles improves this year after suffering extensively due to Covid-19 and electronic shortages worldwide. The report also claims game subscription services will see the most growth, by 27% to be precise, across North America and Europe, which must be good news for Xbox and its compelling Game Pass service.
