Dark Souls III has sold vastly more physical copies on PlayStation 4 in comparison to the Xbox One, UK chart tracker site GFK has confirmed. An eye-watering 71% of total physical sales for From Software’s latest game in the series were recorded as being PlayStation 4 sales, meaning Sony’s console achieved just under three times the amount of sales than Microsoft’s console.
For comparison, GFK says that the Xbox One is responsible for 26% of current sales, with PC coming in at 3%. However, the stats don’t account for digital sales at all, explaining the extremely small number of PC sales – where the majority of people buy their games digitally.
But what about the Xbox One’s remarkably low sales? Well, it’s no secret that the PS4 has largely become the go-to console where multi-platform games are concerned, but there’s another potential reason for why the figure is so low.
[zergpaid]A loophole was discovered shortly after the game’s release in Japan (March 24) that meant Xbox One owners could download the digital English version of Dark Souls III from the Japanese Xbox Store by way of purchasing it through PayPal, enabling them to get it three weeks prior to the April 12 worldwide release date.
Microsoft has since closed the loophole (not that there’s any advantage to be had from doing it now), but it’s unclear how many sales the exploit is accountable for, and we’ll probably never find out.
Dark Souls III hit North America and Europe last week, and has been received almost universal acclaim. You can read our own review right here.