Ps4 shipment reached 110.4mill

[The_Liquid_Laser]

DonFerrari said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

 244.9m games sold during the past fiscal year.  That is the number I find most interesting.  I mean, on this site we focus more on hardware, but hardware is a simple number that is easier to track.  It's a good benchmark.  But software is really what is important.  Software is important to gamers, and software is where a company makes it's profits.

On Nintendo's recent financial report they sold 168.7m software units.  That tells me that PS4 is still the most popular system in the world right now.  Eventually people move on to another system, but most PS4 players have not moved on yet.  Given, PS4 has about twice the install base of Switch and it is not selling anywhere near twice the software.  Some have moved on to the Switch or at least gotten tired of their PS4 for a while.  But still, the bottom line is that PS4 is still the most popular platform in the world right now.  It's still selling the most games even if hardware sales have died down.

You are making a slight mistake on for one portion considering how much sw were sold on the year but then making ratio of that with the cumulative hw sales.

If you look at total SW sale PS4 sold more than twice of what Switch done (at least last I checked), if you look at current year then PS4 sold like 50% more SW on half the HW sold.

PS4 will be a healthy system until it is replaced by PS5 and will even keep selling some after that.

You may be misinterpreting what I am saying, so let me try to say it again.  I mostly want to figure out what is the most popular platform right now.  It's the PS4.  I am not looking at lifetime software results.  I am just talking about right now, or more accurately, the past fiscal year. 

But if you look in terms of install base, PS4 has twice the install base of Switch, but didn't sell twice the software during the past fiscal year.  Not all of those PS4 owners are actively buying software.  PS4 has about 110m potential owners to buy software, while Switch only has about 55m potential owners.  If all owners were equally engaged, then PS4 would sell about twice the software of the Switch just in the past fiscal year.  That is why I am comparing annual software sales to total hardware sales.  Even people who bought a PS4 in 2013 can still buy games.  But the double install base is not resulting in double software sales.  The average PS4 gamer is not currently engaged like the average Switch user is currently engaged. 

My conclusion is that some, a minority, of PS4 users are tired of their PS4.  They either moved onto the Switch or they simply stopped playing games.  

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 14 May 2020