zorg1000 said:
According to the most recent comparison article on this site, PS4/XB1 has sold twice as much as PS3/360 in the same time frame, roughly 25m vs 12.5m. Does this mean that these 8th gen devices will sell significantly better than their 7th gen counterparts or are they simply more frontloaded?
PS3/360 had somewhat slow starts, they released in 2005/2006 yet they had their best years in 2010/2011 which at the time was unheard of for consoles to peak so late in their lives. There are some reasons for such slow starts and late peaks.
For 360, it was the follow up to a somewhat disappointing seller in the original Xbox (under 25 million lifetime vs PS2 over 150 Million lifetime) so it had to build up a reputation and fanbase, also they had some serious hardware issues with the RROD which affected many consoles. In 2010, 360 received a revision that fixed some of its problems and the Kinect released which was a very popular add-on that lured in many casual gamers and caused huge sales in 2010/2011.
For PS3, it launched at an extremely high price tag of $599 and took years to come down to a more mass market price, $299 in 2009 and $249 in 2011. PS3 also recieved its motion based controller, Playstation Move, in 2010. While not as popular as the Kinect, it was still a fairly popular product. At these lower price points along with Playstation Move, we saw sales grow and gave PS3 it's best years in 2010/2011.
PS4/XB1 do not have a price problem with both being under $400 and neither have high failure rates but it remains to be seen if they will have mid-gen add-ons that create significant boosts, Virtual Reality headsets could very well be Kinect/Move type successes.
I personally think PS4/XB1 will peak much sooner and be more frontloaded than their predeccessors, either 2015 or 2016 will be their peaks. Both devices will likely hit the $299 price point in one of these two years, we will also start to see PS3/360 support start to slow down and big hitting exclusives like Uncharted 4/Halo 5 releasing holiday 2015 and games like Gears of War 4/God of War 4 likely in 2016.
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