Xbox One sales around 19 million to date

Microsoft has been pretty cagey about reporting sales figures for the Xbox One in recent months but EA has now given us an idea

The console wars rage on but there's a difference in the way Microsoft and Sony are handling the raw figures. Sony is happy to report the millions of PlayStation 4's sold at any opportunity while MS is playing things closer to their chests, talking about improving their market share, updating the software and getting new titles out to market.

It's not a bad practise and it certainly feels like public opinion is starting to shift in Microsoft's favour in the wake of a price reduction, the removal of the ridiculous Kinect hardware and a great selection of backwards compatible titles. Still it would be good to know a little more about the units sold, and now we do, thanks to EA.

Plenty of huge companies are reporting on their finances from 2015 and EA had a public call last night. Along the way, they mentioned their total install base across both PlayStation and Xbox One.

"Our estimate is 55 million units out there which has exceeded virtually everyone's forecast for the year and now almost 50 per cent higher than previous console cycle so, all of that is very-very positive, all the gameplay we're seeing and the engagement and things like Ultimate Team we're seeing is positive."

Taking away the most recent PS figures (around 35 million) that leaves close to 20 million Xbox Ones out there. It's a big gap but not as big as we might have guessed, and there's plenty more to come from Xbox, including a shared ecosystem across desktop, tablet, mobile and console.