PS4 Outsells Xbox One in January

Sales of gaming consoles might have been down in January as a result of the post-holiday sales slump, but that's totally fine. At least, we presume that's totally fine, since sales of Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One consoles are 60 percent higher, in total, at this point in their lifecycle compared to the exact same time period for the two company's predecessor consoles: the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

In other words, a lot more people have been buying PS4 $399.99 at Dell or Xbox One $367.99 at Amazon consoles than the companies' previous offerings, leading to a generally larger base of video game players in total.

That said, hardware sales in January were down 23 percent. Sales of current consoles, or the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, were down 22 percent, and sales of previous-generation consoles were down 35 percent.

Software and accessory sales in January were up 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, or $12.4 million and $5.4 million. However, the big hit from hardware sales managed to bring total retail sales for hardware, software, and accessories to a 6 percent decrease compared to the same time period last year.