Why console crossplay will mean nothing in the long run

[Bofferbrauer2]

Train wreck said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Well maybe, it does already.

Just look at the NPD prediction thread and where PS4 sales have dropped to over the last weeks. It went from nearly 600 points all the way down to 250, not very far above XBO outside of any promotion (around 200) and far below the Switch (428 points right now) http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/dev2016/post.php?id=8843004

Of course, part of this could just be customers waiting for the Fortnite PS4 bundle, but seeing how far and fast PS4 dropped indicates that this probably won't be enough to recover all the sales lost in between.

The drop is because the Playstation 'Days of Play' deal is gone, it was for a limited time.  It was the best selling console at both Bestbuy.com and Gamestop.com (and projecting to their physical stores as well) while it was available.  That tells me that when the PS4 has some kind of console deal, there is huge demand (Like the GOW PS4 bundle in April or the MHW bundle in January).  Outside of that, its back to normal.  Playstation's representation from Amazon is zero which also affects how the NPD predicting tool operates but we also know that Amazon has been wrong for the last couple months with PS4 system/games not being present on Amazon but still winning/higher overall on NPD.

What Amazon is missing is overly represented at Gamestop, so this balances out the PS4 sales data. The ratio between PS4 and Switch was almost exactly on point for both months the thread has covered yet. At the end of May PS4 didn't have a deal, GoW was out for over a month already and thus had only very limited potential to push sales anymore, the special GoW PS4 was already sold out, and yet the PS4 did considerably better than it does now.

I fact, the Days of Play version, which isn't counted for May, was already up for preorders and yet the sales didn't tank like they're doing right now. They went down a bit of course with the preorders and ended up showing a big spike in early june, but the loss in sales for May weren't not nearly as much as the sales of the PS4 nosedived this last week.

Since this only happened at the very end of the NPD tracking, it will be hard to notice safe from the fact that Switch will be pretty close in sales for June, but if this keeps up in July then Switch will win that month by a very large gap.