According to Amazon’s Best Sellers of 2015 list in video games, Halo 5: Guardians was its best-selling next-generation exclusive between Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 sold best on Xbox One. It seems that despite Sony’s marketing deal with Activision, it didn’t stop Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 from selling better on Xbox One than PlayStation 4. I guess people associate the brand with the console or prefer the online service. Or both.
Back in June during E3, the absence of Call of Duty during Microsoft’s press conference was noticeable. It wasn’t until later in the day at Sony’s press conference that it was revealed that Sony would now have the marketing rights to the Call of Duty series. This would eventually lead to them making a custom Black Ops 3 PlayStation 4 console that was released the same day as the game. It turns out that even that wasn’t enough to stop people from buying it on Xbox. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on Xbox One was number 7 on Amazon’s Best Sellers of 2015 list in video games. In comparison, the PlayStation 4 version was number 11.
The United Kingdom showed similar results. You can look at Amazon’s charts for the United States and United Kingdom by following the sources. Considering that Amazon represents the majority of online shopping that takes place every year, and the United States and United Kingdom are two of the biggest markets when it comes to console video games, we find this data rather significant.
Sources: Amazon United States and Amazon United Kingdom
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.