After showing competitive performance during the important holiday season , Microsoft has seen sales of Xbox hardware falter a bit in the new year so far. Shipments of Xbox consoles were down 20 percent year-over-year for the first quarter of 2015, with 1.6 million units shipped worldwide, according to newly released financial statements

Microsoft no longer breaks out its overall Xbox sales between the Xbox One and the aging Xbox 360, but we can still try to extrapolate the split from previous data. The Xbox 360 sold just 800,000 units worldwide in the first quarter of 2014, and those sales probably fell between 40 and 66 percent this past quarter based on trends from previous and current console transitions. That means the Xbox One sold an estimated 1.12 to 1.34 million units for the quarter, roughly in line with the 1.2 million it sold a year ago.

Keeping sales flat isn't a bad result for the Xbox One, all things considered, but it likely won't be enough for Microsoft to narrow Sony's still-growing lead in overall PS4 sales. Sony announced in early March that it had sold 1.7 million PS4s to consumers worldwide just in the first two months of the year (and overall shipments to stores were likely a bit higher than that). That suggests the PS4's quarterly hardware shipment performance will easily dwarf Microsoft's Xbox One performance when Sony announces its quarterly earnings next week.

On the bright side for Microsoft, though, Xbox Live usage was up over 30 percent, suggesting that those who do own the system are spending more time and money online these days.

These new sales results might show the limits of Microsoft's aggressive pricing strategy now that the holiday season is over. Revenue from Xbox platforms as a whole was down 24 percent year-over-year, primarily due to what Microsoft terms "lower prices of Xbox One consoles compared to the prior year." So as overall Xbox hardware sales drop, Microsoft's series of Xbox One price cuts throughout 2014 mean that revenues from that hardware are dropping even faster, further affecting the company's bottom line.

That could be acceptable given that console hardware is often sold at a loss to get more players spending money on games. Perhaps more worrying for Microsoft, though, is the fact that nine-month fiscal year Xbox platform revenues are down seven percent due to what the company says is "a decrease in second- and third-party video games revenue." That means, generally, that publishers outside of Microsoft are selling fewer Xbox games than they were a year ago. Though the precise size of the decline isn't clear and the situation doesn't seem dire yet, Nintendo's Wii U experience shows that consoles don't do well if they can't keep outside developers happy and selling.