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Mandalore76 on 17 July 2017
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torok said:
Mandalore76 said:

I also recall a lot of people here over optimistically forecasting that PS3 would easily sell over 100 million and pass Wii to finish as the 7th gen leader when all was said and done.  This was being said here as late as 2013 when PS4 was already on the market.  4 years later, the PS3 fell about 15 million short of those predictions.  Don't take this as me saying the PS4 won't sell 100 million.  I'm just pointing out that under-estimating and over-estimating work both ways. 

Personally, no I don't think the XBox One will sell 50 million.  It's sales have peaked already, so it's all downhill from here on out.  The people who multiply years at a time by forecasting 6 million a year for the next 4 years, that's not how it works.  That's the same kind of logic as the people who, in 2013 when PS3 was 26 million behind Wii, were forecasting 6 million PS3 sales per year over the next 4 years will close that gap.  Sales don't stay fixed like that in the back nine of the average consoles lifespan. Look at the 2nd half of the PS3's lifespan for example: 2011 (14.7 mil),  2012 (12.1 mil), 2013 (8.2 mil), 2014 (3.5 mil).  The first full year the PS4 was on sale, the PS3 lost over half it's sales from the year before, and was down 3/4 from where it was the year before PS4 launched. 

For the XBox One to do 60 million as you anticipate, I think it would have to show a year on year increase in sales this year, which I don't see happening.  It's sales had already plateaued when it was just contending with PS4 and Wii U.  With the Switch on the market now, I don't see how anyone could forecast an uptick in XBox One sales over what it has shown already.  And no, I don't think the XBox One S is going to change that.  Once sales drop to a certain point, I think Microsoft will have to move onto the next platform and then yes, XBox One sales will indeed take a full on nosedive.  And, I say this as someone who owns an XBox One but has barely turned it on since getting a Switch at launch.  (I'm disenfranchised enough with Microsoft this gen that PS5 might be my next console purchase.)

The PS3 will still end up close to 90 (87, 88, something like that). It's insane to suppose that the PS4 will end up just marginally better when it is closer to combined PS360 numbers when we align launches. If you're saying that X1 won't do 50 and that PS4 won't do 100M, then we can stop making consoles and call the gaming market dead, because those are horrible numbers. It is however possible that PS4 steals sales from X1, so it ends up above 50M and PS4 gets an extra 10 to 15M from these market changes.

X1 is at 30M and it is 4 years old. X360 (4 years) was at 37M and that was in the end of the year. I really only see X1 failing to 50M if PS4 starts to beat the crap out of him until he is completely dead. While Sony is increasing their advantage, they aren't being aggressive or competent enough to do and onslaught.

If you're using the sales pattern of the PS3 to illustrate the sales, I've already done some calculations with all PS consoles and they sell at a similar pace (proportionally, of course). That's was when I saw Ps3 wouldn't pass 100M, because simply using the PS2 curve adjusted to PS3 resulted in 87-90M. The same PS2 curve puts PS4 at 130M. To make this calculations, I used the separate data for EU, Japan and NA (because these consoles had different launch dates per region) and aligned the numbers. That's exactly why the VGC news posts that show PS4 and PS2 aligned sales shows that PS4 is ahead, they didn't considered that PS2 launched several months later in big regions. Just align the numbers and the results make a lot of sense.

It's all on my profile, Ryng_Tolu kindly provided me the numbers and helped me with the estimations.

I never said that PS4 wouldn't do 100M.  I don't know how much more clear I could have been about that (see bolded above).  What I said was that I personally don't think the XBox One will sell 50 million units, and I'm certain that it won't sell 60 million.  I don't think it's going to get the mid-gen spikes that the XBox 360 got.  The 360's mid-gen refresher added wifi, touch sensitive controll, better cooling, quieter fan all at a decent pricepoint ($299).  The upcoming XBox One X is going to be a $500 console that appeals only to those with 4K TV's.

Add in competition from a newly resurgent Nintendo with the Nintendo Switch, and I think that seals the fact that Xbox One won't have the legs of it's predecessor. There was no brand new hardware on the market during 360's mid-gen spike years. And, the 30 million that Xbox One got these past 4 years were while the Wii U was not a blip on anyone's radar. Now that Nintendo is selling Switches faster than they can get them out of the factory, there is going to be even less marketshare for Xbox One to hang onto.