Media Create/Famitsu/Dengeki - 28/12/15 - 03/01/16

[johnsobas]

Shadow1980 said:

hiska-kun said:

I agree in most of the things written here, but let me add that PSV was released during Christmas too and had the sharpest second week drop in the history of consoles (that didn't have stock problems). 

That said I doubt that PS4 first year performance or launch weeks would've been much different if it had been released in December. 

Nintendo benefits a lot of Christmas (Wii U did), Sony console these recent years not. Vita benefited this year thanks the new demographic Minecraft brought, PS4 holidays sales were mediocre.

 By the way, a comparison between PSV and PS4 would be fun too.

Here's everything I have for every system's 13 weeks compared. First the handhelds:

The DS, PSP, and Vita were all holiday releases ("holiday" defined as November & December), while the GBA and 3DS were not, having launched on March 21 and Feb. 26 respectively. The 3DS clearly declined to baseline sales in rapid fashion. The GBA seems to buck the trend of non-holiday releases due to its sixth and seventh weeks, but further investigation reveals that those weeks overlapped with Golden Week, which sometimes results in boosts to sales. Once the Golden Week boost is over, the GBA declines rapidly to baseline levels.

The DS and PSP show clear zig-zagging, and were obviously in no rush to reach baseline levels. The PSP was released on Dec. 2 while the DS was released on Dec. 12. We see both systems dip a bit, then get a boost on Christmas week, plus the PSP got an additional boost New Year's week. The Vita seems to buck the trend, but it's a special case. It released on Dec. 17, only a week before Christmas. As Christmas was only in the Vita's second week, this could have impacted its overall sales curve. While it's impossible to say for sure, had it released several weeks earlier, that line might look quite a bit different.

Now for consoles. Since the XBO and 360's first weeks was so low and the PS2's was so high, I split them off into their own graphs (I never got around to graphing any OXbox numbers, so those are absent):

 

The PS4 was released on Feb. 22, the Wii U on Dec. 8, the XBO on Sept. 4, the Wii on Dec. 2, the PS3 on Nov. 11, the 360 on Nov. 22, the GameCube on Sept. 14, and the PS2 on March 4.

The GameCube and XBO launched well ahead of the holidays and the PS4 was a late winter release, and as we see they decline and hit their baselines quite rapidly. The PS2 was a late winter release as well, but it appears to be an exception. The only major releases in the first 13 weeks outside of launch week was its fifth week, which saw the releases of Tekken Tag Tournament and Dead or Alive 2. This explains that particular week, but not week 4 being higher than week 3. There were not holidays that I'm aware of, so perhaps supply had something to do with it.

Of the holiday releases, the PS3 launched earliest; it dipped for several weeks then rebounded in December before declining again after the New Year. The Wii did some serious zig-zagging, dropping its second week and then spiking in its fourth week (which was the Week of Dec. 18-24), dropping the week ending New Year's Eve, then spiking again in the first week of January. The Wii U did not have a big spike on either Christmas or New Year's weeks, but did decline rather slowly. The 360 saw a spike Christmas week, then it declined to baseline levels after the holidays. In every case, these systems took longer to reach baseline sales than consoles released outside the holidays. They either got a boost in Christmas week (and sometimes also New Year's week), or they simply dropped slowly. Meanwhile, with the exception of the PS2, barring any other extraneous factors systems released outside the holidays have a more pronounced "hockey stick" shape to their sales curves in their early weeks.

In summary, when a system releases in the year does have an effect on it sales curve in its early weeks. There's just no way around it. We have one possible exception out of 13 systems released in the past 16 years. Otherwise, the rule holds. The PS4 launching early in the year is why it dropped so quickly in its first few weeks when compared to the Wii U. Had it released at about the same time it did in the West, we would have seen the PS4's sales curve in the first 13 weeks be quite different.

Oh, and since you requested a PS4 and Vita comparison, I'll make some charts for that after I eat dinner.

i don't see much correlation here at all, maybe a little bit.  Some do and some don't.  You might as well throw the PS3 and Wii charts out the window, they were supply constrained the entire holiday, the PS3 launched with something like 60k consoles.