xbox: Microsoft sent Xbox Series X|S consoles to Sony before launch, here’s why – Times of India

The two biggies in the gaming console business, Sony and Microsoft, may have been able to move away from duking it out in the so-called console war. Microsoft has its games on the PS platform and is helping out Sony with its new PS Cloud service, while Sony’s own San Diego studio has released MLB The Show 21 for the Xbox and the Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft actually sent some Xbox Series X|S consoles to Sony for them to get the show of MLB The Show 21 running on the consoles, revealed Sarah Bond, Head of Game Creator Experience and Ecosystem at Xbox, in an interview with Axios. To be able to get MLB The Show 21 onto the Xbox platform, Sony got the Xbox Series X|S consoles in a development kit from Microsoft before they were launched.
As per a report by GameReactor, this move seems to have benefitted Microsoft as it helped the company gain “millions of fans” of the Xbox Game Pass. MLB The Show 21 has also been selling well and has reportedly helped increase the baseball audience too.
There were more Sony PlayStation 5 units sold than both the Xbox Series X and S units combined in the launch week of the next-generation consoles, as per the estimates by game sales tracker VGChartz. As per the estimates, Sony globally sold 1,483,910 PS5 consoles, while Microsoft sold 1,345,386 Xbox Series X/S consoles in the time period between November 8 and November 14, 2020. This is despite the PS5 launching later than the next-gen Xbox consoles. Microsoft launched the new Xbox consoles before Sony brought along the PS5 to the markets.