Sony prioritizing US audience for PS5 reveal because Japan is losing interest

[Bofferbrauer2]

src said:

Agente42 said:

Your and mine theory: sony will lose East Asia for Nintendo, maybe will be concrete sooner than I thought. Maybe the China hero project will resist more, but China`s Nintendo performance it's great. 

Nonsense.

PS4 showed massive growth in Asia (bar Japan) and PS5 is only going to increase that userbase. Playstation is unrivalled in Asia in playing AAA console games from around the world, and the audience for such games is only continuing to grow in China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Japan's decline is also miniscule. PS3: 10.2 million, PS4 9.5 million (and this is with Sony not doing further price cuts). PS5 is actually outpacing PS4 in Japan. Another easy 9-10 million while Xbox struggles to do 100k.

Playstation was unrivaled in Asia and RoW in general. But with the Switch, Nintendo has kicked Sony from the throne in an increasing amount of countries. Switch has sold over 5M in the RoW last year, which is way above anything any Playstation managed to sell in the RoW in a single year ever. And the Switch sales are up compared to last year, meaning this trend isn't about to stop.

If you look at the platform sales in the RoW, Sony has reigned supreme in the past. The bestselling ones are all Playstation consoles, with PS2, PS4, PSP, and PS3, in that order, on the top 4 spots. Number 5 is the DS, but the Switch is already just behind and will pass the DS this summer, and also the PS3, which is barely in front of the DS. The PSP could fall this holiday season, and in 2022 or 2023 it will surpass the PS4 even with slowing sales in that region. This just shows that Nintendo has finally understood and is conquering the RoW market, and most notable for this change here is the Asian market.

As for Japan's decline, it's not minuscule. Considering that the PS4 sold almost 50% more than the PS3, having any amount of decline is a disaster in itself. With how popular the PS4 was, it should have gone up a lot, yet it still was down. And no, another price cut wouldn't have added enough sales to break even with the PS3, let alone change the sales trend and trajectory in Japan.

The PS5 is outpacing the PS4, that's true, but that was also a very low bar to pass. I mean, the commercial failure that is the Wii U sold better launch-aligned in Japan than the PS4 - and would still lead the PS5 by that metric. It doesn't have the sales decline the PS4 had, so it can have a genuine increase. But for that, it will need more support from Japanese developers bringing unique Japanese titles, as these are still pretty rare on the radar of PS5 releases. But the chances are there for the PS5 to change the trend in Japan, Sony just needs to grab them.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 14 June 2021