Xbox One sales have apparently picked up following the launch of the Kinect-free version in June.
From the launch of both the Xbox One and PS4 at the end of 2013, Sony’s latest console has been striding ahead in the sales figures.
In fact, the latest show the PS4 sales top 7 million in April, with the Xbox One reaching 5 million around the same time.
But now the Xbox One has started to catch up, thanks to a price cut to £399.99 down from the original £429, and due to Microsoft’s decision to offer a Kinect-free alternative for £349.99.
“Our momentum has really improved in the past weeks and months and we’re obviously really happy about that”, said Harvey Eagle, Xbox Marketing Director during a talk attended by TrustedReviews. “And by momentum I mean sales”.
When the Xbox One price was unveiled, the Kinect was seen as the piece of kit making the Microsoft console a whopping £80 more expensive than the Sony alternative, despite very similar internal specs.
The company even started going back on its original statements that the Kinect would have to be always on and permanently connected in order for the Xbox One to function correctly.
Since then, Microsoft seems to be slowly stepping back from its initial enthusiasm for the motion gaming peripheral.
It recently emerged that the Xbox One actually performs better without Kinect, giving developers access to up to 10 per cent additional GPU performance for games.
“Xbox One games look beautiful and have rich gameplay and platform features. How developers choose to access the extra GPU performance for their games will be up to them. We have started working with a number of developers on how they can best take advantage of these changes”, said Microsoft in a statement.
Read more: Best Xbox One Games
