| Puppyroach said: Yes the number is shipped, nothing else. Sell through is most likely about 21.4M so VGC is pretty spot on :). It is down about 20% YOY but that can largely be explained with the extra stock of 1.4M from the December quarter. It is not good numbers though, one would it would have had at least some growth, especially considering it is the market leader. |
It's sort of an anomaly though, as there were severe stock issues at launch and into 2014 (especially in Europe) that caused a longer than usual holiday sales swell after launch. We saw X1 launch huge, then demand was met and sales fell flat rapidly in the first months of 2014 (hence disKinect, $399, $349, etc). With PS4, the overlap of pent-up people waiting for one to come in stock resulted in big numbers really related to holiday 2013 (people that would have bought them then had they been available to buy, vs regular month to month demand).
This year the supply was steady and has been until the recent weirdness with Amazon US.
Considering $399 original MSRP is maintained, once you consider the initial stock issues causing launch sales to be stretched into the first three or four months of 2014, it all makes sense, and it's not down much YoY if you mentally estimate the difference between unmet launch demand and the general baseline. And with each price drop, you unmask a new level of base demand. There are simply buyers at $349, and especially $299 and lower, that won't buy in at $399. That's why Sony's estimates, designed to be conservative so as to beat them with actual results, have PS4 set for growth.
It's next to impossible to have growth at a $399 price point. There are a certain number of people willing to pay that much for a console, and with every month there are fewer remaining. It's not impulse buy territory for very many folks. $299 is going to bring a massive number of new people in, and then a year or two out beyond $299 lies $249/$199, when it definitely reaches impulse territory for most gamers who would buy any home console at all.
