PS4 tops January NPD, but Xbox One had a record month and was the only new console to show growth

PS4 vs Xbox One: good news from both sides of the console war.

PS4 topped us retail charts in the US in January, according to the NPD Group. The full monthly report drops next week, but both Sony and Microsoft have released statements on their initial performance.

Microsoft said the Xbox One had its best January to date, and was the only console in this generation to enjoy year-on-year growth during the month. Time spent playing Xbox One games grew a tasty 21% year-on-year.

Not a bad result for Microsoft given there were no big Xbox One exclusives in January; the biggest new release was the multiplatform Resident Evil 7. The PS4 version of Resident Evil 7 has PlayStationVR support and a long period of demo exclusivity in its favour, but the Xbox One build has cross-buy with Windows 10 PC through Play Anywhere, which is pretty nice.

The PS4 was the best-selling console of the month, and Sony told Gamespot that four of the five bestselling games of January were PS4 releases.

Since the Xbox One had no new or even especially notable recent exclusives, and the only PS4 exclusives released in January were Gravity Rush 2 and Yakuza 0, Sony is probably referring to a single-format chart, where the PS4 and Xbox One SKUs of a game are tallied separately.