vivster said:
The basic reasoning behind it is the assumption of a greatly changed electronic entertainment industry since the start of last gen. This includes: - Shorter hardware cycles (see smartphones, televisions) The only impact smartphones have had on the industry is that it has taken away much of the casual market for handheld devices. This hasn't just automatically made people want to replace everything they own after having it a year or two. Otherwise, everyone who wanted to jump onto this gen would have done it by now. - People willing to pay more(hence more early adopters -> frontloaded gen) $399 was just a great price for the PS4 (compared to $499 and $599 for PS3), hence why so many people bought it. This really has no affect on total sales, just affects the time when those who would not buy it for $499, but instead wait til it was $399, got it. Once the PS4 hits $299, you're going to sales get a huge boost, again. - Move away from dedicated devices(move to converged devices) 19M+ people bought the PS4 in less than a year in a half. If that doesn't say people do want dedicated devices, I don't know what does. Of course, ever since the PS1 theses consoles have not been just for playing games, so they aren't truly dedicated devices, in the traditional sense. - Japan not giving a fuck Yes, the home console market decreased in Japan in favor of handhelds and mobile phones. However, we still don't know what the PS4 is going to sell like there since 3rd parties haven't thrown their full support behind it, still making games for older systems. It looks like 2015 is going to be a better year there for the PS4. There's also the fact that other markets have opened up and/or become bigger, making up for shortcomings in Japan. - casual's complete abandonment thanks to mobile While casuals helped push the PS2 to ~160M, they sure as hell didn't make up the majority of its audience. It still would have sold 100M+ without them. There's nothing that screams casual about the PS3, except maybe Move, but it still will reach 90M, even with great competition from 360 and, for the first few years of its life, the Wii (which took the vast majority of casuals.) The PS4 is going to outperform the PS3. Stuff like that and some wishful thinking. Of course these are just assumptions based on observations outside the console industry and could be completely wrong. If you go by these assumptions, the PS4 having a great first year means absolutely nothing and rather seems to confirm frontloaded behavior. So yeah, it's actually really easy to belive PS4 will not reach 100m with the right mindset^^ |
