PS4 has beaten the SNES in Sales (NES next target)

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Shadow1980 said:

pray4mojo said:

I'm basing it on two things. The sales arch and the fact that we're entering year four of a (likely) 6 year cycle. The PS2, in year three, peaked. The PS4 just spent it's third year and it's barely half way to 100 million. Traditional sales data shows that sales will decline each year going forward. So, basic logic says that it's probably not going to get there before the next console comes out. This means that in order to sell 100 million units, it's going to have to sell 15-25 million while PS5 is out, and that is something we just don't see anymore in console gaming. 

The math just isn't there. I could be wrong though. We'll see.

This shows a complete lack of understanding of how and why consoles sell what they do.

Sales curves were typically relatively predictable barring unusual circumstances. It is true that systems did typically peak by their third full year, averaging around their second (within a given region, anyway). But this is not the case anymore. Last generation turned those assumptions on their head. The PS3 & 360 did not peak until 2011, fully five and six years after launch, respectively. That quite literally never happened before. The closest example was the Sega Genesis (in the U.S. at least), but that was only because Nintendo had a de facto monopoly on the market when the Genesis debuted, which greatly depressed sales in 1989-90. It wasn't until 1991, at which point Nintendo's monopoly had been broken, that the Genesis finally started selling, and it peaked in 1993.

One of the biggest factors influencing a system's success is pricing, and the biggest stimulator of sales is price cuts. IMO the only plausible explanation for the slow initial sales and extremely delayed peak of the PS3 & 360 was their relatively high inflation-adjusted price points at launch combined with price cuts that were spaced out more over time and were smaller in relative terms than past price cuts. In fact, I made a thread explaining this a few weeks back.

If we look at the actual factors involved in determining the sales curve of any given system, we can reasonably assume that the PS4 (and by extension the XBO) will likely peak a bit earlier than the PS3 & 360, but much later than the PS2 and other older systems did. It's reasonable to assume that the PS4 will peak next year. The PS4 had sold just shy of 36M units lifetime as of the end of 2015, so that means it has sold 14M globally this year as of the end of November and will likely sell another 5-6M in December, putting it at around 19-20M for the year, bringing its lifetime tally to as much as 56M. With the combined effect of the Slim and Pro likely continuing to cause sales growth into 2017, we could see sales upward of 22-23M next year, which would push the PS4 to close to 80M. While 2018 will likely see continued decline, even a rate of decline like the PS3, combined with the launch of the PS5 in 2020 (which will increase the rate of decline), the PS4 should still sell at least another 20M units by time it is discontinued. The PS3 was able to do that and more, with about 25M sold from 2012 through 2015. The PS4 should easily surpass 40M each in North America and Europe, will probably do around 10M in Japan, and should pull at least 15M down in other markets.

I honestly do not forsee any scenario where the PS4 fails to sell 100M units lifetime. The PS3 was able to sell 85M despite coming in a distant second in America and having a much smaller slice of the market in Europe than the PS2 did. With the PS4 far outpacing the PS3 in the West in both raw numbers and market share, 100M is essentially a shoo-in.

Actually, the late PS360 peak was largely because of Nintendo killing off the Wii, when Wii owners who wanted to play games had to buy themselves a new console. Also, the games people were waiting for came pretty late in the console's life.

Launches prior to 360 aren't really comparable worldwide, as the launches in different regions were so far from each other.