The newest console war being waged across the globe is the Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 battle, which has Microsoft and Sony along with their legions of fans debating the merits of their respective consoles and trying to gain the edge on the competition. Both consoles have sold at a record breaking pace since they were both launched in November 2013, with the PlayStation 4 having the sales lead at 4.2 million units sold versus 3 million units for the Xbox One. Now, a new report shows that the Xbox One had close to a million unsold units available in 2013, and Microsoft has revealed the reason why.

Gamespot is reporting that Microsoft announced that they had shipped 3.9 million Xbox One units to retailers in 2013. This leaves close to 900,000 unsold Xbox One consoles being left unsold or in transport during the end of the year. This contradicts claims by the company that they were selling every Xbox One they could during the holiday shopping season. Microsoft corporate PR representative David Dennis later sent a statement about these unsold Xbox One consoles explaining that the machines were ordered late in the year and could not be sold by Dec. 31, the end of the financial quarter:

"We sold through nearly every unit we could in the holiday period and pulled forward as many units as we could from Q3. However, only some of those shipments were sold into the channel in the final period of the quarter and so there was not time to sell the units through to customers...These units are now being sold through to customers."

Despite the large number of unsold Xbox One machines being reported, Microsoft is reporting strong numbers for the third quart of the financial year. The company is reporting in their Total Devices and Consumer revenue segment (which includes the Xbox One and the Xbox 360) that overall profits went up 13 percent to $11.91 billion. This is due in part to Xbox platform revenue expanding with the launch of the Xbox One. Xbox platforms accounted for $1.6 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2013 due to the launch of the Xbox One and 3.5 million Xbox 360 consoles being sold to retailers as well.

Microsoft's overall revenue for the quarter was $24.52 billion, and the company reported a net profit of $6.56 billion.