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RolStoppable said:
curl-6 said:

Cheers; PS5 vs PS4 in Japan is definitely going to be an interesting one to watch over the years to come. Could go either way.

I don't think so. PS5 sales have been significantly inflated by the global PS5 shortage, because it's clear from the software sales that the actual demand for the PS5 sits far below the hardware sales it has achieved so far.

You can't ignore how much the software situation has changed either. Last generation it was the norm that a lot of third party games skipped the Nintendo consoles, but by now it's almost exclusively only the bigger Japanese software publishers who have games left that aren't coming to PS and Nintendo, but only PS. These big budget games are bigger sellers and therefore more important individually, but they are also far fewer in numbers, so the PS5's hardware baseline will inevitably suffer over the years.

The only way PS5 vs. PS4 can remain a close race is if the global chip shortage persists for several years in combination with a too big ongoing PS5 allocation for Japan. The semiconductor shortage will continue well into 2022, but Sony's too high shipment allocation might not go hand in hand with that as it did for most of 2021. Sometime during 2023 it should become clearly visible in the PS5 vs. PS4 comparison that the PS5 won't be able to keep up.

How can one determine the native demand for PS5 based off software sales if the global shortage is drawing consoles from the country? People do not buy software for platforms they don't own, but how many people want to own the platform?