Is PS4 the first console to sell like this without a fad?

[Bofferbrauer2]

CGI-Quality said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:
The PS4 is selling so strongly because both Nintendo and Microsoft basically did everything wrong with their consoles at the start of this gen. The catastrophic Wii U communication and thus sales plus the disastrous XBO reveal just meant that all Sony had to do is not fuck up hard to win this gen so far.

However, both concurrents have learned from their mistakes. Microsoft brings out the strongest console ever, has ditched Kinect and backpedaled on many other things from it's reveal. Nintendo, on the other hand, brought a sucessor to the unsuccessful Wii U with the Switch and this Hybrid console is selling like hot cakes, potentially outselling the Wii U even in it's launch year of 2017, so without a full year under it's belt!

With both its rivals having gotten stronger with drastically different approaches, it will be interesting to see how the sales of the PS4 will evolve in 2018 and beyond

Oh, and about the fad: It had one at launch: (by far) most powerful console. Yet another point to the list of fails on Microsofts side during the XBO reveal, but with the ONE X the corrected that, albeit way too late. If the PS4 and XBO would have come out with their internal hardware switched, I'm very sure Microsoft would have sold much more XBO and the PS4 not as much, though how big that difference would have been in the end is open for debate.

I think the disparity between the PlayStation and Xbox is not just down to hardware power and flawed launches. The PlayStation, as a brand, is just far stronger. The situation wouldn't look much different if the power situation was reversed. And a good way to know this is looking at what happened to the Xbox One X. It had absolutely no impact on PS4's holiday sales, suggesting that most people just don't care about that stuff. 

Nintendo and Sony are in a very good place, right now.  Microsoft will have to find another hook (like the 360) that can really compete again (on top of, needing one of the other two to mess up in a very dramatic way).

Well Microsoft effectively killed the Xbox brand with the totally botched launch of the XBO. While The Playstation Brand would still be much stronger than the Xbox brand, especially outside of US &UK, it wouldn't be in such a bad shape as it is now. Those who bought an XBOX where mostly upgrading from their original ONE or waiting with their Xbox purchase until the upgraded model was out.

Like I said, it's not all on the power, but at least, the XBO would have had one advantage over the PS4 (and not fully ruined their conference with it btw) and as a result the sales of both platforms would have been closer together. If it's only 2M closer or 20M is up to debate, but for sure they would have been closer together as the PS4 would have lost an advantage and the XBO won one instead.