quickrick said:
Thing is January-April should more then make up for those launch numbers. isn't switch being compared to ps4? and ps4 regularly outsells those numbers for the past 3 years since it hit 299$ by a good margin. then switch also got a extra week in 2018 in jan, giving a nice 50k boost. |
This isn't a fair way to frame that situation - what you're implying is that the only honest comparison of the systems is the periods where they hit the same price point.
There are other factors at play, for instance, at the stage that PS4 hit that price point it had obviously had more time to accrue a more compelling library of games...
Regardless, the price that a system sells for is a choice made by the manufacturer, which has obviously been influenced by a number of factors, including the spec.
So if Sony chose to go for a more powerful platform in exchange for a higher launch price then they should be held to account for that choice, for better or worse. Nobody is arguing that because some of PS4s extra sales were due to it's higher horse-power in comparison to Xbox & Switch that this should somehow be kept in mind and to an extent held against it when analysing hardware sales. Price & hardware are part of the same equation, as well as other factors, so Sony, or the other two shouldn't be excused as a result of being better placed within these categories or any other.
I could just as easily explain away Switch's recent unremarkable sales due to a lack of high-profile games. Undoubtedly, that has played a role but that doesn't mean that Nintendo gets a pass - the relative drought is their fault. Going by your logic, we can only compare hardware sales in periods where systems have an equal strength of software releases, which is obviously nonsense.
If next gen Microsoft sells XB2 at half the price of the PS5, it is still absolutely fair play to compare the HW sales, as price-point is a fundamental part of the product's strategy that these companies have to get right, which is reflected in their sales.
Finally, you are also comparing a relatively low-powered hybrid to a hi-powered home console - they are very different products with very different value propositions, so contending that they need to be similarly priced in order to fairly evaluate their success is folly in my opinion.
