Go PS4! I didn't think it'd do 100m 2 years ago, but it looks solid now.

A decline is not unexpected as the console is reaching its peak. Consoles usually dip after the third year. The system just hit its year three so it should go down. Also, I don't think there will be a price cut. Sony needs to profits.

As far as 100 million, that may a bit of a long shot. If we were in the third year of a console cycle, then sure, 100 million is not a far cry. But Generation 8 is ending and Generation 9 is starting. I think this will have an impact on the system's growth as competition increases. 

No..... the scorpio is completely irrelevant to whatever sony's plans are. As long as its playing the same games, the gap is too much now for the scorpio to mean anything. And no matter how right MS prices it, sony is in the position to undercut them on price. 

beat me to it :( 

Did you just assume your imaginary, hypothetical aunt with sagging balls gender? 

I think we're far beyond the point of being able to point to the line between generations and extrapolate data from it. Nintendo have gone completely out of sync with Sony and MS and seem to have opted against directly competing with either, Sony and MS aren't even synced for their first ever mid-gen upgrades, and it remains to be seen how either plans to approach a "proper" generation jump.

The PS4 is likley going to start seeing a decline, but we've not yet seen anything that would imply it'll be an aggressive drop. Sony are currently forecasting a drop from 20 million to 18 million.

And that's just shipped.  For all we know actual consumer sales could be equal FY 2017 as it was in 2016. FY 2018 could well be another 18m year and who knows what's after.  We'll likely get a gta VI in 2019 and that will move a lot of ps4's.

Gratulation for the best console!
Best Japan-and West-Games-Support ever. 2017/18 is a dream for Gamer.

The only time the competition didn't fucked it up (if you want to say fuck just sat it already), was during gen 7 and Sony fucked up that one big time. So even if the competition succeeds and Sony screws up it would still go towards 80 million+. So I guess it would be at 50 million if the Xone and Wii U where not a letdown. It would be at ten million if it was a handheld though.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about that number 18 in Sony's fj report.

18 Million is not a "wish target" or approximation or a "let's see if we can get there target". 18 Million is the number of PS4s being manufactured from April 1st 2017 to March 31st 2018 as per the new business plan. This 18M target was set a long time ago, components and assembly line times have been ordered a long time ago as well (and obviously some of it was already delivered/used as we are one month into the new fj.

That is simply a basic law of mass manufacturing. You must order in masses and as early as possible and leave it at that.  If by the end of this year, they see the target is not met (so far, Sony has always met its targets pretty accurately so I'm pretty sure they'll get there one way or the other), there isn't much they can/should do:

a) In the case they sell way more than planned, they could manufacture more. This sounds simple, the reality is quite different. They would have to order additional components (maybe even on the spot market) and factory time on short notice. This usually leads to an increase of manufacturing costs in the 50-100% range (since towards end of the year, everything runs on max capacity anyways), and would be way too expensive to be financially feasible.

b) In the case they sell way less than planned, they could cancel component orders and manufacturing runs. The penalties for cancelling components and factory times on short order are prohibitively high so you better stockpile the surplus.

In short: 18M PS4s will be manufactured as the fj report says.

I was actually expecting to see a lower number here, around 17M. 18M still is a very high numer not far from the 20M last fj which was an extremely high bet.