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Mandalore76 on 26 March 2021
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The_Liquid_Laser said:
Mandalore76 said:

I don't think Sony will have any trouble selling over 80 million PS5's.  It's lifetime sales should be at least what the PS4 has done.  It would have needed to price itself out of the general consumer range the way they did with PS3 to see a significant drop in lifetime sales from its predecessor.  Also, Microsoft would need to really eat into Sony's sales, which also doesn't seem to have happened since the PS5 sales have been tracking so close to PS4 sales launch aligned.  We'll have a better idea of course of how their ratios play out once they both sort out their stock issues, so maybe it is too early to say.  But while PlayStation sales are on the decline in Japan, the PS4 made huge gains in Europe and NA that the PS5 should be able to retain as well.

I wouldn't make any lifetime predictions if you are going by the data alone, which we only have 4 months of so far.  People are buying PS5's when the only notable exclusive is a Gen 7 port (Demon's Souls).  There are people who buy a new system at every launch regardless of how good or bad the system is. 

If you look at other factors though, I don't think the PS5 is in so hot of a position.  Microsoft is definitely going to eat into their sales simply because of their recent acquisitions.  However, I think the Switch is going to eat into PS5 sales even more.  PS5 is going to lose sales to Switch in the other parts of the world too.  It won't be a total shutout or anything like it is in Japan, but a certain fraction of gamers in NA, Europe and RoW are going to buy a Nintendo system only, because they mostly like the games that are coming out of Japan.  On top of that, the hybrid model is a lot more convenient than a home-only model and a fair amount of people are going to prefer Switch just because of that.  Lastly, I do think $500 is too much on the pricey side.  It's not as bad as the PS3's $600, but it's still expensive enough to lose some customers.

Put all of those factors together and yeah, PS5 could very well drop to 80m lifetime (or less).  I am not making it a hard prediction at this point, but I see it as a possibility.  I can make a hard prediction that it will definitely not outsell the PS4 though.  The PS4 had weak competition and the PS5 has pretty tough competition in comparison.  Sony is going to be caught flatfooted if they expect Generation 9 to be another cakewalk for them.

I'd have to see Microsoft commit to a really ballsy move and restrict future Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein, etc games to XBox/PC before considering how much of an impact the Bethesda acquisition will have on this gen.  They haven't done it with previous big franchise acquisitions, notably Minecraft, so there isn't precedent at the moment to say that PS5 definitely won't get ports of those games.  I'm not saying they can't do it.  It would be very interesting to see them go that route.  But, I just don't know if they will sacrifice all of those multiplatform software sales when they haven't done something like that before.  And, while I agree that the PS5 point isn't at the $399 sweet spot the PS4 launched at, Microsoft's top model is sold at the same pricepoint.  So again, the PS5 isn't going to lose customers to Microsoft based on price the way the XBox One did to the PS4 at launch.  The Series S is cheaper, but the majority of people in the market for a next gen console probably aren't going to go for that model.  Again, it is very early to tell, so we'll see.  As for the Switch, I don't expect the PS5 and Switch to impact each other's sales, just like how the PS4 and Switch didn't really effect each other's sales.  I'm not saying this generation will be a cakewalk for Sony.  But for the PS5 to see a massive drop in lifetime sales, typically you would expect to have to see Sony contribute to that faltering on their own rather than just a step up in competition.