Ubisoft finds more value in an Xbox One gamer compared to a PS4 owner

The purchase rate of the Playstation 4 continues to astound pundits, journalist, and fans of the industry as the gaming console puts up behemoth sales numbers each passing month. With the industry’s next best alternative selling at a disadvantaged rate of 1:2 compared to the PS4, many would be hard-pressed to believe that Xbox One owners could be of more value to gaming studios than its massively adopted counterpart.

However, VentureBeat is reporting that French gaming publisher Ubisoft saw “a much higher average revenue per player (ARPU)” among Xbox One owners compared to that of the PS4 group. According to the breakdown of Ubisoft’s third quarter fiscal reporting, the company noticed that for almost every dollar spent on purchases for its properties by PS4 owners, an Xbox One owner shelled out a dollar and twenty-five cents.

The sheer magnitude of PS4 owners still sits heavily in Sony’s corner for game development negotiations, and with the Xbox One trailing roughly 2:1 behind its competitor three years into this console generation, Microsoft will need to leverage as many metrics at its disposal as possible to court 3^rd party publishers.

Fortunately for Xbox One owners, Microsoft appears to be aware of its position at the negotiation table and is now reporting numbers that help developers better understand the dynamics of an Xbox One owner. The Xbox team has recently been keen on reporting hours played, achievements unlocked, and other gaming-related statistics to entice developers to continue to seek the Xbox One as a worthwhile investment.

If Sony players spent as much as Microsoft’s consumers, we’d expect to see a revenue gap for Ubisoft between the two systems that was closer to 89 percent.

Instead, we can clearly see that Xbox One has the higher ARPU.

This makes sense from the standpoint that the PS4 is more popular overall, which means more frugal gamers have picked up the Sony system since that’s the one most people are going with when they can only afford a single system. But these are also the consumers who spend less, and that will — in turn — drag down the PS4’s attach rate.”

With Ubisoft’s quarterly’s showing the seemingly unforeseen value an Xbox One owner has over that of a PS4 owner, Microsoft now has another set of numbers to bring to its game developer negotiations. Xbox One isn’t exactly suffering for good titles so far in 2016, but it never hurts to show developers the platform’s true value.