Aquamarine said:
With a combined USA installbase of 26.55 million, Sony and Microsoft are at a critical juncture. They are at a point where they have to further demonstrate value proposition for the USA consumer. Resting on their laurels has become increasingly harder to drive sell-through. I'm not convinced that Neo and Scorpio have enough core pull that Sony and Microsoft can continue to speed up growth rates. Rather, their presence along with lower-cost base models will be just good enough to sustain the status quo in the year of release (~5 million consoles in the USA each per year, check the chart in the OP). Companies like Microsoft and Sony are most concerned about future growth more than anything, so there will likely be some internal panic over their failure to turn into runaway successes. Maybe they'll speed up release of the PS5 to 2019...but it could go either way depending on sales trends. I've personally never thought that incremental hardware upgrades are the optimal strategy for companies. They can be a decent stopgap in a pinch, but they never represent the future and it was disappointing to see both Sony and Microsoft prioritize them. Prior examples in the USA: Sega utterly failed with the 32X / Sega CD upgrades, Game Boy Color sales weren't anything special, etc. So I'm projecting that Neo and Scorpio keep the two alive through 2017 and into 2018 with tapering growth rates over-time. 2019 and beyond the two consoles will need to be replaced. Virtual Reality is a complete unknown. According to Steamspy, Job Simulator (an HTC Vive Pack-in) has 91,967 owners. HTC Vive seems to be the most popular VR platform right now, so only 100K worldwide owners is quite disappointing even considering the HTC Vive's steep price. That doesn't bode well for a breakout success for PlayStation VR....although there have been other instances where a platform flourishes despite the failure of its competitor, so I'm willing to give PSVR the benefit of the doubt until I can look at some sales figures. I would love to be proven wrong, though. It's always nice to see the markets flourish. |
Hi Aqua,
Sorry for the late reply.
Great points made above. We really are getting to the point where, usually in traditional gens, we'd start to see the manufacturers grow install bases by appealing to a more casual base. As you say, it's becoming increasingly harder for them to do that this gen. Price can only do so much.
Speaking of price, that will certainly be one driver this holiday season as both Microsoft and Sony will no doubt aim for the under $300 deals again on base models. Neo and Scorpio represent an opportunity to drive growth among current core gamers. With the right strategy and right marketing we could see this be the cause of PS4/XB1 peak years as casuals buy on price and core gamers buy on specs/performance.
I think the saviour of this gen so far has been the network and services that both Sony and Microsoft provide using the PlayStation/Xbox brand (not to mention games transitioning to a service). It's great to see both companies expand outside of the console, such as Sony's PlayStation Vue/Remote Play and Microsoft's Windows 10 features. This is one way to keep users loyal to the ecosystem whilst also ensuring that hardware sales can remain stable. It means that both are able to achieve much higher revenues this gen, even if the install base is slightly lower as most are spending more than before on higher margin digital content and additional services. The addition of these services, coupled with Neo, will be a way for Sony to build up a loyal userbase both on the services side and hardware side. Therefore somewhat eliminating the reset each generation as most would be invested in one of the two big ecosystems.
So that's why I slightly disagree with you on the prospect of incremental hardware upgrades today. If pitched right, they can appeal to the core userbase that is driving growth through hardware sales, software sales and digital service sales. Neo will do enough here to keep hardware sell through healthy and the software and services will do the rest, especially with recurring subscriptions being embraced by more than 20 million so far (on the Sony side). Console becomes increasingly core in the future is my guess. Smaller userbase that spends more on average. (Already the case tbh)
(Also, in regards to the GBA example, I think it's a bad one to use tbh. The point of Neo and Scorpio is that the same games run on all consoles in the PS4/XB1 family. Therefore it's not like those previous iterative consoles which required new software or different media etc...)
VR is an unknown, especially when looking at how low end headsets have had issues retaining users and high end headsets have had issues gaining users. PS VR sits somewhere in the middle and has the advantage of a fairly low price (compared to other high end VR) and having a standard platform (PS4) with over 43 million users (so far). It also seems to have the right software line up as well. But at the end of the day this is a new tech platform and has a high entry cost compared to past gaming add ons/peripherals. It'd be ridiculous to suggest this will sell like Wii/Kinect, but it could do better than some previous add ons like PS2's camera.
Looking at the market so far, it seems that most buyers will be early adoptors of PS4 and gaming enthusiasts, which does represent quite a bit of the PS4's install base. But software, price and consumer feedback will be key in driving sales outside of the initial launch period. It'll be interesting to see how PS VR performs. I don't see it driving PS4 hardware though.
