Global hardware Nov 4th 2017

[DonFerrari]

trasharmdsister12 said:

DonFerrari said:

PS4 wasn't at any disadvantage. But to list those games as the reason PS4 was a success then you would have to explain X1 having those games and not being a success, which will show you that the games themselves weren't system sellers.

Don't forget the narrative that PS3 and PS4 "doesn't have games". A great part of the success of PS4 have more to do with the "greatness awaits", the confidence from customers that the system will have great games in the future, much more than now.

Sure few of those were flops, but listing all as big games and big system seller and mixing all of those make your list fall flat.

So more than a dozen million people bought a PS4 in the first year just to wait for the games to come and not play anything? Fact is having all those games in addition to confidence that more defining experiences were coming as well as a clear policy set from Sony is what made PS4's fly off the shelves all the way from launch until now and into the foreseeable future. It's not just one thing. It's a bunch of factors working together. Whether one identifies those games as system sellers or not is up to one's own agenda but no one can completely negate their effect on hardware sales early in the generation. 

And the X1 may have had these same games but as you yourself have put it, consumer confidence was at a low with the brand due to policies and treatment of compelling first party content at the tail end of last gen. And yet the XB1 still went on to sell really strong numbers for that first year. Not record-setting, but strong nonetheless. That is again attributable to a multitude of things (less so on consumer confidence and policy), one being having these experiences. 

Well for MS they threated X1 as record breaking, but let's not dwelve there.

Sure having all those games contributed to the success. But two dozen games together helping create interest versus a single game being the system seller are very different situation and that is the whole point from that thread.