| Mummelmann said: And this trend is why I've been telling people to calm down about the PS4's lifetime sales prospects, there is no reason to think that it will sell significant numbers after the PS5 releases. Slim and Pro editions doesn't seem to have had much effect on the baseline for now and price cuts only gets you so far, it already has a reasonable price for its age and relative tech. The "199$ is the magic mass market price threshold" myth still lives on but never had any basis, smart devices should have murdered this belief a long time ago but it somehow persists. A product that is inherently not appealing to mass market won't suddenly become desirable by hitting some fabled pinpoint price point, it's all about the perceived value, which has no direct relation to actual value (manufacture cost) or perhaps even relative value (what the product offers in terms of tech and usability compared to the competition). |
One gen does not make a trend. Besides, those were actually flawed results. The PS4 launched 7 years after the PS3, while the PS3 was launched 6 years after the PS2. If you add in the PS3's sales from 2012, that wold have made it closer to ~22M sales after the PS4 launched, pretty close to the PS1's sales. Even if you want to say that the PS4 would have taken off maybe 2M off those sales, it still would have been ~20M. It's safe to say the PS4 is going to do at least as well as the PS3 did in that scenerio. So, by March 2018, we should be looking at ~78M-80M PS4's sold. By March of 2019, probably ~94M-96M. This should be the year the PS5 launches. So, even if it only does ~20M from March 2019 til it is discontinued, probably in 2022/2023, that would put it at ~114M-116M.
Also, $199 is no myth. It's just the product has to have appeal in the first place. Just look at the XBO. Even if that dropped to $199, while the PS4 stays ~$249, the XBO isn't going to magically start outselling it. But, the PS4 has mass appeal. So, once it hits $199 sales will at least stay steady, instead of a slow decline. It's one of the reasons I think Sony is going to be on par with last years 20M. Same thing happened to the PS's before it. It just didn't help the PS3 because of how late it was in the gen, and because it didn't have quite the appeal as the PS1/PS2/PS4. People were just ready for next gen. Even a $149 price wouldn't have helped it much more.
