Why I don't think the PS4 will pass 100m

[Scoobes]

Puppyroach said:

Scoobes said:

DVDs were affordable by year 3 of the PS2s life cycle (and as ubiquitous as video streaming services today), so by that point the PS2 was a pretty expensive DVD player if you wanted a primary DVD player. The whole DVD selling point only really helped push the console for the first year or two. By year 3, even myself as a poor 18yr old student had access to 3 pieces of electronic equipment that could play DVDs. 

The strange thing is you're right in that PS4 doesn't have a truly unique selling point. Only a few major exclusives, upper-mid level PC tech, streaming services similar to the competition and it's not even the cheapest console on the market. Yet it has still sold a ridiculous number of units.

Going forward, if Sony did nothing to rectify this then the sales would drop, but we know they have things in the works. We've yet to see the impact of VR or the release of major next-gen exclusives. And as is the course with consoles, Sony will have unannounced projects and will release hardware/software to expand on the consoles capabilities thereby extending the lifetime sales of the console (as will Nintendo and Microsoft).

Now, will it push past Wii.. yes I think it will, for the simple reason that Nintendo pre-maturely stopped Wii software support. The Wii could have sold so much more than it did, but sales fell off the proverbial cliff after year 4 due to a lack of support. I don't see that happening with PS4. Why? Well, GT7 probably won't come out until year 4 anyway

Yes, DVD:s dropped in price, but by then PS2 had already become ahousehold name. It also offered something noone else could: DVD and a gaming machine in one. MS offered the same but was completely new to the market and more focused on the US.

To further look into how early sales are no indication on longterm sales, look at this:

PS2 first year: 1,41M

PS3 first year: 3,61M

PS2 second year: 9,2M

PS3 second year: 9,24M

Even PS3 outsold PS2 during the first two years, yet ended up with about half the sales. The generations become more and more frontloaded and I think his is a hard callenge for Sony, MS and Nintendo. Sony are way better than Nintendo at supporting their machine with software but even they know the burden it takes on the finances when you keep producing dedicvated gaming machines. You make more money selling only software.

Where's that data from? After a google search I found this:

Which is supposedly based on VGChartz numbers. It was done back in 2010 but doesn't match with your numbers.

Edit- Wait a sec, I think I found the data you were referencing (from financial reports) in which case the numbers need to be put into context.

1.41 million Yr 1 PS2 sales accounts for less than 1 month of sales in Japan only; 3.61 million Yr 1 PS3 sales accounts for 5 months in Japan and the US

9.2 million Yr 2 PS2 sales accounts for first full year of sales in Japan, plus 5 and 6 months of sales in the EU and US respectively; 9.24 million Yr 2 PS3 sales accounts for the first full year of sales in all three major regions.

In that context, it doesn't look so good for early PS3 sales. You could apply this regional context for PS4 and in US/EU (and overall) it still looks good for PS4 considering it's at 8.4 million in the space of 8 months. Japan looks to be a bit of a bust by comparison, but overall, it's still on course to beat 100 million lifetime sales.