PS4 > 130m lifetime? | |||
| yes | 43 | 48.31% | |
| no | 40 | 44.94% | |
| see results. | 6 | 6.74% | |
| Total: | 89 | ||
| Barkley said: PS4 is hitting 110m+ lifetime, not "around 100m." |
Of course man I know.
Shadow1980 said:
If "around 100M" really is your estimate for lifetime sales, it would entail "around 26-27M" from 2018 to the end of its life cycle, which would further entail an absolutely massive and rapid drop after this year, something more akin to the Wii (and other post-SNES Nintendo consoles). 100M is an incredibly pessimistic estimate. Also, I don't care about what some analysts have said about PC gaming, nor do I care if Mr. Card and Sony might have been inspired by some analyst's claims when they conceived of the Pro. There is simply no real evidence that the PC market has any real impact on console sales. Consoles do have a life cycle, but the downturn in sales has little to do with competition from other platforms. The console cycle is dictated entirely by sales, and those sales are due entirely to internal factors. Like many other consumer electronics goods, their yearly sales follow a roughly bell-like curve over time, exhibiting a grow-peak-decline pattern (though some systems were so front-loaded that the growth period was very truncated). While each system's overall health and lifetime sales depend on factors like pricing, games, and marketing, they will inevitably enter a period of declining sales, not because some external factor like PCs or another console from another brand affected them (though a console getting a direct replacement by a new-gen system of the same brand does have an effect on its sales), but because they simply start to run out of new customers who will buy them. DVD players (excluding computer DVD drives and PS2s) did the same thing, experiencing yearly growth from their 1997 debut on up to around 2003-04 when sales peaked, then sales started to decline. Why? Because DVD players were gradually reaching a saturation point. By the end of 2003, over 50% of U.S. households owned a DVD player, and by 2006 that percent had grown to over 80%. By that point, almost everyone who wanted one and could afford one had one, leaving the relatively few late adopters, replacement purchases, and second-unit purchases as the only sources of sales. This is the deal with consoles as well. There are only so many households willing and able to buy a game console. The PS2, like it was everywhere else, is the best-selling console ever in the U.S., with nearly 47 million units sold. There were 116.7 million households in the U.S. in 2010 according to the Census, so that means that the best-selling console ever reached about 40% of households. Assuming no overlap between PS2, Xbox, and GameCube owners and only one console per home, that gives us an absolute upper limit of 62% of households that are console-owning homes (the 360 & PS3 alone sold 70M in the U.S., and there were an estimated 125.8M households in the U.S., so again assuming no overlap and one system per household, that gives us at most 55.6% of households owning one of last gen's "HD twins"). Of course, we do know there is significant overlap, so the number of console-owning households is less that that. Nielsen estimated that in 2012 56% of U.S. households, or about 68M total, owned at least one Gen 7 console, of which 102M had been sold at the end of that year across the 360, PS3, & Wii. What this means is that even an extremely popular console will simply start to run out of people to sell to once it starts to pass the 30-35M mark. Even with its commanding market share, the PS2 wasn't just going to keep selling at 2002 levels for long. By the end of 2005, it had already reached 32.5M units in the U.S., 70% of its lifetime sales, which gives us a total household penetration rate of 28.7%, or nearly half the absolute upper limit of the potential size of the U.S. console market (~60% of households). It also means that the PS5 isn't coming out until PS4 sales have sufficiently declined. The only way the PS5 will come out in 2019 is if sales experience a greater than expected drop-off next year. I'm talking a 30% YoY decline.
TL;DR: The console cycle is purely a sales-related phenomenon. PCs don't have a damn thing to do with console sales. Console sales can be fully explained by factors endogenous to a given console and its brand. And over time, a console maker simply starts to run out of new customers who have the desire and means to buy their current system, so sales start to decline over time. And the PS5 ain't coming out in 2019 unless 2018 is a relatively sucky year for PS4 sales. |
Your point is "Sales are the only thing that matters. Sales good means no PS5." You argument seems to be a blinder type focus. In your mind, sales now are the only thing that matters. If this was true, a simple algorithm could make Sony's business decisions. "X sales means do X." In reality, we know this to not be the case. There is far more going on that is absent from your argument.
Saying "PCs have nothing to do with consoles," is ludicrous. Do other business not affect gaming? Let's look at an example. Around 2011 and 2012, analyst were saying that handheld gaming was being hurt by mobile gaming. While I think their comment were hyperbolic, it's not unfounded. One argument for why the Vita failed was because of mobile devices. The PSP was able to sell well despite being up against Nintendo's strongest handheld. The Vita wasn't despite being up against Nintendo's weakest handheld. Why? The reason could be that there wasn't much of a need for a multimedia handheld like the Vita when mobile phone did the same job and better. Nintendo didn't have this problem because it was very game focus. Now, you may disagree with my assessment, but analysts were conscious about this. They were concerned that the rise of mobile gaming would cut into handheld gaming. They were worried another industry might hurt console gaming.
Why did Microsoft enter the console market? If PC does not affect consoles, surely the reverse must be true. Yet we have the biggest software manufacturer in the world getting into the console space only to lose billions for a market that doesn't affect them. Furthermore, if sales were the only thing that matter, Microsoft would have quit after the XBox. Why bother? It's because Sony was a threat to Microsoft's business. Bloomberg:
...“Remember that Microsoft partly entered the game console business for defensive reasons,” Rosoff said. “The company was concerned that a PlayStation successor would become the default gateway to networked entertainment in the home—Ken Kutaragi promised as much—and cut into consumer PC sales.”
So here we have Microsoft saying they are in the console business because they feared the Playstation will hurt PC sales. So console affect PCs. With that in mind, couldn't the reverse be true? You already have the then Cheif of Sony Interactive Entertainment (not some analyst, by the way) said they say users move to the PC. This should be enough to tell you that Sony is looking at the PC as a threat just as Microsoft looked at PlayStation as a threat
Furthermore, business decisions are going to be driven more than by current sales numbers. Business is about the future, not the present. The concern is not where Playstation is now but where it will be in 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 10 year, and so one. This is even more of a concern with consoles where the first few months means the most. Nintendo (Wii U) and Sony (PS3) have both learned this the hard way. Take just the software. Projects that are wrapping up now will come out around 2019 and 2020 (and some even longer). If Sony waits, these games will go to the PC and Nintendo Switch first. Sony is very reliant on third-party titles, so they want to make sure their newest system has it. If they wait too long, they run the risk of their customers moving on to other offers (we already have House saying consumers are doing this). Lastly, your comment that the system will come out in 2019 if 2018 sales are shortsighted. These consoles take a long time to design and promote. Nintendo Switch was in the design phase as early as March 2015. It didn't come out until too years later.
As a minor point, there is also the economy which has been skyrocketting. As you point out, consumer electronics sales have a bell-like curve. We can agree that the PS4 is, at the very least, moving towards the downward portion of that. At the same time, the economy in the US is improving dramatically and will probably do so over the next few years. So why would it benefit Sony to wait? They would want something out sooner to take advantage of rising economy. That way, if the economy does go south again they will at least have the forward momentum to sustain the system.
The last thing to point out is that the generations usually run about 6 years. Playstation was on the market for 5 years (late 1995 - early 2000 for Japan), PS2 was 6 and a half years (March 2000 - late 2006) and the PS3 was 7 years (2006 - 2013). The reason for the PS3's long lifecycle was due to the economy. The markets crashed in 2008 and the game industry was hit around 2010. Sony couldn't release another big box product during that time. The economy started to show some improvements after 2012. If you think the PS4 will have a 7-year lifespan, you're sorely mistaken.
This post has gone on a little longer and I've crammed a lot into it. The point I'm trying to make is if you so narrowly focus your analysis, you miss a lot. Again, it's the forest for the tree. Yeah, sales matter a lot, but decisions like these are going to take into account far more information than just a sales chart. Think to yourself, do you think the head of SIE gets into the office, pours his coffee, look at the sales charts and say "Hmmm, this was a good quarter. I think we can hold off on that PS5." Of course not, but that's what your post was suggesting. Sony is going to consider the economy, current market, how they think it will look in a few years and other business such as TVs (4K TVs matter for a 4K system) or PC (competing for the same customers). All of these matters. This is why I considered them in my analysis and you ignored them. It's not just sales. Sorry.
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I dont know about you guys...but something tells me when 2018 2019 rolls around and ps4 and ps4 pro get a price drop....were could see possibly higher sales then 2017.
And whats the bold part?
Unless Sony decide to stop production suddenly or announce pretty soon its repleacement, the console is on track to sell it.
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WhatATimeToBeAlive said:
What kind of (Nintendo) mushrooms have you been eating? Did you even read what you wrote? "PS4 sales will be 18m in 2018 and after that it will sell 2m." "All of the new projects that are starting could be Switch focused or a Switch exclusive." You must be living in some alternative Nintendo-universe. |
No, he lives in the Mushroom Kingdom.
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