Can PS4 holiday sales match PS2 holiday sales?

[ZhugeEX]

Thanks for the responses so far everyone.

As you all have noted, PlayStation 2 was indeed a monster when it came to sales and not just for its first three years. It continued to break records after the PlayStation 3 was released and till today holds many records that are yet to be broken.

I think that Sony really dominated the holidays worldwide thanks to the success of the console both in North America and Japan. With PlayStation 4 there is still the worldwide domination but Microsoft have successfully built up a strong Xbox brand in the U.S. whilst the console market in Japan has seen steep declines with the PlayStation 4 actually selling worse than the PS3 (to date), and we all know the PS3 didn;t hold a candle to the PS2 in Japan.

Therefore it is clear to see that Sony may struggle to hit any of the PS2 record holidays listed above. However the console continues to perform well in North America, having just had a better November than the PS2 ever did, and in Europe / PAL territories where consumers are purchasing consoles in big numbers much early on this gen.

I think it is fairly clear at this point that North America will account for at least 3 million unit sales this holiday and Europe / PAL territories should be able to easily match and exceed that number. For Japan though I don't think it will be able to perform well enough and this may be one of the main reasons why holiday sales fall short of the records listed above.

Here is some additional information for holiday 2001 that some may find interesting and help with future posts on the subject-

The PlayStation 2 sold through more than 5.3 million units worldwide between November 26th 2001 and January 6th 2002. Of that number more than 1.1 million were from Japan and 2.5 million were from North America meaning that a total of 3.6 million units were sold through during that period in both regions. If you remember, last year the PS4 sold through 4.1 million worldwide during that same period so it really shows how important Japan was to the early success of PlayStation 2 back then.