The past three months have been pretty much the best ever for Microsoft’s Xbox One. Not in terms of absolute sales – nothing tops the holiday season sales, after all – but in terms of finally getting a solid run at the top of some major markets, ahead of Sony’s thus-far dominant PS4. The enormous amount of hard work that the Xbox team has put into recovering from the console’s disastrous announcement and muted launch is finally starting to pay off, and a console war that’s so far seen Sony win almost every round by default is finally starting to heat up.

If the Xbox can maintain much of this inertia in the UK and USA over the coming months as we approach the holidays, it should have a very, very solid Christmas, and start to look like a realistic competitor to PS4 rather than an also-ran.