Console launch sales comparison graphs

[mjk45]

Doctor_MG said:

yo33331 said:

Yep, you are right, I agree.

If PS5 was in full stock everywhere I think it could reach 20M for this year alone.

I see this type of argument a lot, and I don't really understand what the logic is behind it. Demand definitely seems to be high right now, but it's difficult to judge true demand since it's notably limited. In addition, the limited availability of the product could be driving sales higher than they normally would be. Historically there hasn't been a single console that has ever sold 20 million in their first year, and even at the PS4's sales height (when it was definitely widely available and had a very large game library and several huge releases) it just barely crossed that mark, and it did so exactly once. 

Consoles (if they are successful, anyway) always sell the least in both the initial years and their last years on the market, essentially creating a bell curve. I don't see why this tendency would change for the PS5 even if it were widely available. Unless you think 20M would be one of their weakest years sales wise for the PS5. 

We are not in a business as usual sales climate with its associated bell curves and other such sales dynamics, while we talk about the gaming negatives stemming from the pandemic, it has also had an impact in the form of extra demand and while this demand in regard to the consoles hardware sales is across the board it has mostly gone unmet, except for the Switch where the sales jumped up by around 6 million in 2020 and pretty much held the line this year, so with this different world who's to say that the pandemic demand that helped drive software sales and hardware demand wouldn't have lead to an unrestrained PS5 having 20 million sales and then when things settled  fallen away.

Last edited by mjk45 - on 27 December 2021