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aTokenYeti on 12 April 2022
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PotentHerbs said:
Dulfite said:

I say this as a Nintendo-only console gamer and a PC gamer:

People are confusing me by saying Sony will simply recover all these temporarily lost sales later in the cycle. If people are buying Xboxes, Switch's, or PCs because they can't find a PS5, most of them aren't going to then also buy a PS5 later. Most gamers don't own two devices. These are permanently lost sales for the entire generation, perhaps longer, and acting like they are just delayed sales is illogical, except for a small fraction that can afford multiple devices. And the bigger problem is, it is a snowball. The more Xboxes that sell, the more likely friends will be talked into buying an Xbox over a PS5 so they can play with their friends.

I know Europe is fragmented into a whole bunch of countries with different identities and languages, but in USA I think the friend effect will be especially true. People like jumping on bandwagons and rising momentum.

The problem with this line of thinking is that Xbox is still behind the PS5 in lifetime sales including in NA + UK. The snowball effect is still in the PS5's favor even with shortages. If the Series S can't even shift enough units for 100K weekly wins, despite their availability in every market and low price entry, I find it hard to believe it's turning the tide for the generation, with everything working in its favor at the moment. I do expect Xbox to win March NPD though, but if it fails to do that, it would be extremely underwhelming for the brand. 

What people need to realize is that Xbox never lost momentum in NA, even during the early days of the Xbox One, and the likelihood of Xbox winning NA in a landslide similar to the Xbox 360, is as likely as the PS5 outselling the PS2's lifetime in Japan. Xbox winning NA by 5M - 10M units will get cancelled out by whatever the PS5 sells in Japan. The issue is Xbox gaining traction in Europe and RoTW where PlayStation can legitimately outsell it 3:1, 5:1, even 10:1. Regions where Microsoft sells 100K - 200K units over the course of a generation are regions where Sony sells over 1M PS5's in the same time period. Xbox could sell 70M+ units this generation and still be behind 50M in unit sales.

Was with you on a lot of this until the end. There is absolutely no way that Xbox sells 70 million consoles lifetime with PlayStation selling 120 million consoles (which is where it would be if Xbox was behind by 50 million sales). We have seen from 3 consecutive console generations (6th, 7th, and 8th) that the global console market has been able to support no greater than 175 million combined PlayStations and Xboxes. We have seen 0 evidence that this has changed, and it would take a seismic shift in the market for this not be the case. 

If Xbox manages to sell 70 million consoles, a hard ceiling of 105 million consoles can be pretty safely assumed for PlayStation. Similarly, if PlayStation 5 manages to hit 120 million consoles, we can expect no greater than 55 million Xbox Series X|S consoles. 

Personally, I find the former more plausible than the latter. PS5 is well off PS4’s sales pace, and X|S is well ahead of the Xbox One’s sales pace. The simplest outcome is the most likely: the PS5 is going to sell less than the PS4 lifetime and the Xbox Series X|S is going to sell more than the Xbox One lifetime.