XONE sales have picked up since the price drop and they've even won the day on some months in this calendar year. And it will certainly win some months in 2016 as well. Perhaps I left the PS4 a little short by saying 90 million, as tbh I was simply adding up the figures from the last gen for a total of 160 million and dividing them accordingly; however it was early in the morning and I didn't factor things in such as people switching from the Wii etc. So I'd revise my figures to 110m for the PS4 and 75m for the XONE. That's roughly a 3:2 ratio which I believe is similar to the current ratio. Last I heard in terms of estimates, PS4 is roughly 13 million units ahead.
Plenty of industry experts have predicted the XONE to have healthy lifetime sales, and I really think your figures are OTT. We can't use 2014 as the basis for XONE's future; they had a horrible 2014, we all know that, they got everything wrong and had to play catch up; however they've learned from mistakes and have made many improvements in 2015. Titles such as Quantum Break, Fable Legends, Gears of War 4, Recore etc. will surely push systems in 2016 just as Titanfall and Halo 5 did.
There's also whispers from reputable people that Microsoft have paid a lot of money to secure the services of the biggest name in gaming; Hideo Kojima to create a spiritual successor to the Silent Hills project; from what I've heard they tried to secure the rights from Konami but Konami demanded too much so they told them where to go and approached Kojima themselves. All the shit storm about Konami, Kojima, the Game Awards etc. will have served as a publicity campaign for this hypothetical title that no money could buy. If this title exists, and I personally don't doubt it; well then I'd expect it to be the ultimate system mover, as every Tom, Dick and Harry will want to play it, even people who have never played an MGS in their lives will jump on the bandwagon because of all the controversy and hype.
I really don't understand all the hate towards XONE. Its a great console; its just not quite as good as the PS4 but sure in my mind we should just have all the consoles. The more the merrier. If there were ten (worthwhile) companies with systems on the market, I'd want them all 
The only "wins" for a few months for Xbox One were in the US as reported by NPD, a tracking firm. PS4 still slaughtered them outright in worldwide sales. In fact, there hasn't been a single month of the 25 months these two consoles have been on the market that Xbox One has outsold the PS4 worldwide. So in reality, Xbox One has won zero months in the sales war.
If Xbox One had a horrible 2014, what do you call this year? At least in 2014 they managed bragging rights for top US sales in November and December. They were beaten in November and December looks to play out the same way. Titanfall didn't make a blip on the radar in Xbox One sales and while Halo 5 pushed Xbox One sales slightly over PS4 in October, the series has experienced it's lowest sales in it's history. 2015 has also seen Microsoft resort to a flat-out refusal to release sales figures for the Xbox One. Given Microsoft's past as the biggest braggers when they scored an NPD sales victory for a month, their silence speaks volumes as to the state of the Xbox One's sales performance.
The entire Silent Hills/Kojima thing is just what it is: A rumor. Given Microsoft's consistent failures with third party exclusives and just about anything outside the shooter/racing genre, do you really believe they will court a developer who is distinctly Japanese for a platform where Japanese games tend to sell poorly? If anything, I see Kojima releasing a game for the PS4.
The "hate" directed toward Microsoft is because they have a consistent pattern of screwing the consumer. It's been thoroughly discussed here. Scrapping the original Xbox after just four years. Up to 50% failure rate on the 360 because they rushed it to market to beat Sony. Forcing Kinect on gamers. NSA spying. Draconian DRM policies they tried to implement. Telling gamers without an internet connection to go buy a 360 and basically STFU. Years of paid, timed exclusives depriving gamers on other systems content. Scuttling all of their best studios like FASA, Ensemble, Digital Anvil, Bizarre Creations....the list goes on and on. Then they buy up Rare and turn them into a joke, making crap like Kinect Sports and goofy looking avatars for your home screen.
Microsoft has been a detriment and a pox on gaming. They introduces the world to the "pay to play" model where you are charged for online access. They locked digital services like Netflix behind a paywall. They not only allowed but encouraged the proliferation of paid DLC and microtransactions. Look at the Forza games! They cut the number of cars and tracks the games ship with and to get everything now, you literally have to spend a couple hundred dollars. It all boils down to greed.
We all know the Xbox 360 was a technical mess and had a high failure rate; however I know people who went with he PS3 as their primary console and went through just as many systems as I did. The PS3 maybe had a slightly lower fail rate but I honestly doubt there was a big difference; if there was then clearly I just live among unlucky people.
Paid, timed exclusives work both ways; you can't give out about MS doing it, yet turn a blind eye to Sony; what about
Rocket League? One of the most popular titles of 2015, XONE owners have to wait until next year to play it. I don't think timed exclusives is something we can complain about; this is a business, things like exclusives (timed or permanent) and bundles help push systems, so they're an inevitability. Timed exclusives existed long before Microsoft began to use them as a tool. As I said before I don't mind exclusives being timed, I just don't like when publishers are cloak and dagger about it.
Tomb Raider is one such example; however it wasn't the first,
Resident Evil 4 springs to mind, that moved quite a few Gamecubes, only to be available on PS2 eventually. Like I said Phil Spencer was very honest about it, so I commend that.
We all have our qualms with how publishers handle certain studios. Perhaps Rare serve as the greatest example; however they also serve as an example of how MS learns from mistakes. It appears that Rare are finally being allowed to create once again. So it'll be interesting to see how things go with their next title.
At least
Forza worked. What about the mess that was
Driveclub? "
Driveclub free to all PS Plus members"....."Actually it'll be a free version, you'll have to pay to upgrade to the full version if you like it"........"Sorry we can't offer you your free version yet but you're welcome to buy the full version"........"Actually it was only temporary, you snooze you lose". So yeah we were treated temporarily, after the title had launched, to a glorified demo of a game that wasn't very good to begin with. Thanks Sony you're the greatest. If you're going to tar and feather Microsoft, then please don't pull any punches with Sony. Personally I loved
Forza 2 but I'd never been a big fan of racers, and when
Forza 3 launched, I couldn't get into it. However I have heard of content annually shifting more off disk and behind a pay wall; however that's more a trend of the industry as a whole, as opposed to just Microsoft.
Personally I despise DLC; my opinion on that won't change. My belief is that any added maps or missions that a developer wishes to add should be done so as a free gift to the gamer. An expansion pack is something different entirely; if it adds a new campaign, then of course you can charge for it; however an expansion has to be meaty enough to warrant the title. Charging 30 dollars for an expansion that adds 20+ hours of gameplay to a 60 hour game, is fine by me. However for 5 hours, it's not on; I mean plenty of games are too short to begin with these days, so I'd ask why weren't those five hours in the game to begin with? However that's an entirely different topic altogether and one I could talk about all day.
As for which months they won; from what I've read,
Titanfall won them March and
Halo won them October; apparently
Rare Replay and
Gears of War increased sales as well. It's really a no brainer that good exclusives can push systems. It's a shame really that MS messed up the XONE's announcement so badly. As I honestly feel had they announced 1. a Kinect free option 2. no DRM and 3. backwards compatibility; that we'd be looking at a much tighter race atm. And a much tighter race would benefit us the gamer, above the companies.How you ask? Well the tighter the race, the more Sony would be pushed to offer us what we want. Name changes, backwards compatibility, PSOne classics being multi-buy; the sky would be the limit if Sony had that extra push. Though you never know; Sony really stuffed up the start of the last gen and yet made up massive ground; I'd hope MS can do something similar as we move towards the middle of these consoles' life cycles. And don't forget the NX, hopefully it takes its fair share of the pie. As honestly a tight race is good for the gamer.
I already made it clear that some decisions made by MS in the past weren't sound; they had to back pedal and some people paid the ultimate price for that with some reshuffles at the top. However since Phil came to the helm, they've moved forward well. He's a likable guy; even Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller are often full of praise for him, and they're arguably the biggest PS fanboys in the industry, they had a panel at PSX for christ sake. The DRM stuff was laughable. The idea of having to have a Kinect put me off the system tbh, it wasn't until they announced they would offer the option of having a system without it that I personally decided I'd eventually pick one up. Making a mistake is one thing but admitting that mistakes and changing things is another. The past matters little, the future is what counts.
I think there's no smoke without fire; the
Silent Hills coming to XONE rumor was such a bizarre one, that it seemed too crazy for even the craziest person to make up, so I had my suspicions. So when Adam Kovic was recently a guest on Kinda Funny and told them that there's whispers that Kojima has signed on with Microsoft for a spiritual successor to the project I wasn't surprised. Let's be honest here; we may paint Kojima as some messiah of the industry who just loves to create content for the gamer. However at the end of the day he is a man; if MS drive a truckload of money up to his front door and request he make them a game, then its doubtful he'd turn them down. It doesn't stop him signing a similar deal with Sony for a stealth game as a successor to
MGS perhaps. Look at Inafune, he's whoring himself out, attaching himself to every project possible. He's making that cash, cash money. Fair play to him; I say Kojima get out there and make yourself your fortune. His name is gold-dust in the industry atm. If I was Nintendo, MS and Sony; I'd get his name attached to an exclusive for each system; suddenly a lot more people would want to have one of each console. I can picture it now; Kojima sitting in an ivory tower with Phil, Reggie and Shuhei laughing at all us pitiful gamers clamoring for their systems
Thats the reality; one can't paint Microsoft as some evil dark lord and Sony as a white night; we're all just pawns to each of them, they want our money first and foremost. Its a business.
Again I say it; the more consoles, the merrier.
