Xbox One Outsells PS4 in UK With Help of FIFA 15

The PlayStation 4's run at the top of the weekly UK hardware chart was broken last week, with a FIFA 15 marketing push from Microsoft helping ensure the Xbox One came out on top.

According to retail sources speaking to MCV, the FIFA 15 promotion helped drive Xbox One hardware sales by 155 percent week-on-week. In the UK, television adverts of EA's popular soccer title advertised the game specifically for Microsoft's next-gen console.

The Xbox One price in Britain has also been discounted by £20 as part of a limited-time promotion, which could have further aided the console's momentum at retail.

FIFA 15, which accounted for an extraordinary 80 percent of all retail sales in the UK last week, also appeared to boost PlayStation 4 sales by about 80 percent.

Sony recently revealed it has already sold one million PlayStation 4 consoles in the UK, and was the second-fastest core games console in history to achieve the feat (Nintendo's Wii remains the quickest). The next-gen system often outsells the Xbox One on a weekly basis, though not always.

The strong sales performance of both systems will come as a relief to publishers and developers, with the viability of home consoles becoming a matter for debate ahead of the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One.