Hello All,

The PlayStation 4 is now more than half way through its second holiday season (excluding launch) and is on track to have a very successful year. We’ve just learnt that US sales for the month of November exceeded 1.5 million* whilst in Japan the console sold around 110,000 units**. Together these numbers are significantly up over last year and so I’d like to pose a question. Can PS4 sales this holiday match or exceed any of the PS2's first three holiday sales periods. 

The second holiday for PlayStation 2 (Nov & Dec 2002) achieved record breaking sales for hardware and software sell through worldwide. In North America the PlayStation 2 sold through more than 4 million units to consumers during November and December, In Europe and PAL territories the console sold through more than 3.4 million and in Japan the console sold through 0.94m. Combined with the rest of the world, this led to a total of 8.5 million PlayStation 2’s sold through during the holiday period, a 24% increase over the same period of the previous year. 

These record breaking sales along with holiday sales for 2001 and 2003 are written below.

PlayStation 2 holiday sales (Nov & Dec worldwide sell through)***

2001: 6.9m 

2002: 8.5m

2003: 7.8m

The PS4's first holiday season was in 2014, Sony sold through 4.1 million units*** to end users between November 23rd 2014 and January 4th 2015. The console had been released in over 123 countries and regions at this time.

Now lets compare that to the PlayStation 2 which sold through more than 5.3 million units worldwide between November 26th 2001 and January 6th 2002. So using the data above we can work out that November 1st to November 25th 2001 accounted for around 1.6 million units worldwide. 

So as we can see the PlayStation 4's first holiday season in 2014 was around 1.2 million lower than the PlayStation 2's first holiday in 2001.

So my question, and the point of this thread, is do you think that PlayStation 4 sell through during November and December will be able to match or even exceed any of the 3 holiday periods listed above for PlayStation 2?

*Sell through figures according to The NPD Group
***Sell through figures according to Media Create
***Sell through figures of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 2 are estimated by SCEI

Maybe exceed 2001..... The ps2 base is split between Xbox 360 and ps3 users, and not every Xbox guy is jumping to a ps4

It is quite an interesting thought, I think there is a good chance that it might exceed at least 2001. It really was a good year for PS4 and remember Sony announced they had there best November in PlayStation history in North America so we know that it did very good at least over there.

The gains it will make will be mostly from Europe and rest of world. We probably will not get very good numbers on these areas, so it will be hard to tell. Sony Forecasted 10.5m between both Qs. Q4 is likely to be 3m.

So 7.5m is left for Q3 (Holidays). It might be undershot and they may ship 8m-9m, but that leaves only about 7m-8m sold. That is still less then PS2's second holiday.

In short, surely pass PS2's 1st holiday, and a chance for 3rd. But not likely for it's second.

I think the middle east and Europe will be the great contributors to it doing better than the PS3. A lot of young people from the UK are getting teaching jobs in the middle east and a lot of middle eastern students are studying in the UK. When they go back, they are taking their gaming habits back with them. The results of this are probably more starting to show.

This holiday is beating 2001, I'm confident of that
2002 seems tough to beat. Maybe in 2016
If the 300€ EU Xmas promo I read about is legit, it has a good chance of beating 2003.
I can see this holiday sales being in the 7.5-8M range

Might beat that 6.9 one.

PS2 was a monster.

If current VGC numbers are accurate then it should breeze by that 2001 total and approach 2003 levels.

4.3 Million from November up until 5th December so far. 4 more weeks of data, 3 weeks sitting around or above 1 Million units takes us to ~7.3 Million. Another 400 to 500k from the final week leading into January sits us right around 7.8 Million units.

Give or take a few hundred thousand and it could break the 8 Million barrier. 8.5 Million just seems too far out of reach.

the PS4 may be competitive these first few holidays but long term it will get blown out of the water, the PS2's longevity was sick