RolStoppable said:
curl, you have been so wrong for so long that you aren't in a position to tell others what to do, except advise them to be not like you. It's not too early to make the call now, the PS5 won't sell more than Switch. Just like it wasn't too early in 2017 to make the call that Switch will sell more than the PS4. The "it's too early" line in a general sense usually comes from people who don't like how things look at the moment, so they want to buy some time in hopes that the state of things gets closer to what they want them to be. The reasons why Switch was going to sell more than the PS4 could already be known in 2017. The biggest reason of them was and is that Nintendo holds a monopoly in the portable console market, so merely keeping that market flat from generation 8 (~90m between 3DS and Vita) was going to get Switch close to 100m units sold. From there it doesn't need a big vote of confidence that Nintendo can achieve a big enough presence in the home console market to get the necessary sales to beat the PS4 lifetime sales. After all, the Wii U did not represent the ceiling for Nintendo home console sales, it was a complete and utter failure with Nintendo making all the wrong decisions for what they wanted to go for with that console. Likewise, we already know a lot about the PS5 in late 2020. It's a straight-forward follow-up to the PS4, so the chances that the PS5 will appeal to a broader audience than the PS4 are very slim. One opportunity for growth is to take consumers away from Xbox which appeals to the very same group of gamers, but what we know about Xbox Series X is that this gen multiplats aren't going to be notably inferior in terms of framerate and resolution, plus Microsoft has been expanding their first party studios; this makes it tough for Sony to convince Xbox One owners to go for the PS brand, because Microsoft ticked the most important boxes to retain what they had. Growth for the PS brand is mandatory to challenge Switch sales because Switch sells better than the PS4, but the realistic options for growth are limited to developing markets growing bigger over time, because the PS5 itself doesn't have the appeal to grow in the matured markets. Chances are good that PS sales decline slightly in both Japan and North America, so the gains the PS5 makes in developing markets will be mostly offset by these decreases. I can understand why a lot of people have trouble to make good predictions for Nintendo consoles, because Nintendo consoles can greatly differ in strategy from one generation to the next one, but Sony and Microsoft make it pretty easy. The PS5 isn't a mysterious entity where it's hard to say what it is and what it will be, so the general consensus for its lifetime sales is bound to be in the correct ballpark, unlike for Switch where the consensus was off by miles. |
PS5 is already off to a stronger start than the PS4 and this time people know going in that Xbox Series won't have exclusives cos they'll be on PC as well, something that didn't become a factor until midway into Xbone's life, plus Series is inheriting a smaller base than Xbone did from 360, so PS5 may indeed manage to take even more marketshare from Microsoft this generation compared to last and grow through that.
Last edited by curl-6 - on 03 December 2020
