RolStoppable said:
Arkaign said:
It's hard to say. We'll certainly know more when they both drop to the $299 range (maybe fall 2015ish imho is likely). That's when a good number of 7th gen holdouts will start coming to join the party. Remember that a lot of people only recently bought 7th gen consoles, and there are a huge number of people who like to play games that don't have a lot of discretionary income at all.
Anyway, back to your Q, I'd estimate 95-115M PS4, with XB1 running about 40% of that total, plus or minus a few million. It could turn out worse for both of them. The ratios appear pretty locked in though, so it's severely unlikely that anything will change the gap. Europe is dead to XB1, so is Japan/China for various reasons (ditto PS4 to be honest, that's a mobile world for Japan and a PC/pirate world for China). So that leaves the US/UK. Even IF (and that's a HUGE HUGE HUGE "IF") the XB1 magically manages to pull close to the PS4 in the US/UK, it won't be enough to get anywhere in the same universe of closing the gap globally.
Install bases snowball, as people want to play with their friends, and the lead in Europe is so huge that XB1 may start to suffer from stores not even stocking them within a year or two, or at the very least severely limited shelf space, merchandising, advertising.
Right now people are still living in a partial fantasy land because 360 was so popular in the US last gen. But if you look at the numbers, XB1 had a great Nov/Dec, and has been in a tailspin ever since. It was front-loaded to their most dedicated fanbase, but isn't capturing the attention of the wider market at all. If they can't change that, they're as good as dead. Their business model isn't built like Nintendo where they can fly under the radar a bit, their operations are immensely expensive and built on mass adoption.
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Why did you say that the PS4 will have sold thrice as much as the X1 by Jan 1st, 2016?
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Because I do believe that it will. I think a lot of XB1 sales will come towards the latter part of the gen when it's cheaper. A lot of PS4-only players will pick one up as second systems to play the great exclusives they missed out on. A lot of the casuals that make respectable targets for XB1 customers also won't leap until the thing is $249/$199 kind of price as well (keep in mind MILLIONS of these 7th gen consoles were sold in the past 12-24 months alone, and likely these 'value/casual' customers aren't jumping to 8G for a good while yet).
So yeah : PS4 heavy advantage through 2015, but then I think the PS4 will decel a bit and the monthly gaps will get smaller, especially in the US. With the right moneyhatted exclusives and hyped stuff, they might even take a month or two here and there in the scrappy mid to late years of the gen.
Once the most dedicated gamers already have their console of choice (which so far has been nearly 2:1 in favor of PS4), as time goes by these very same poeple are more and more likely to have a few hundred bucks burning a hole in their pockets wanting to grab another console for an instant backlog of great titles. This could potentially be a silver lining for the XB1 in my opinion.
