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Mandalore76 on 13 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.

IcaroRibeiro said:
drkohler said:

There is a limit of how long you can keep the fanbase waiting... and that time is running out fast.

What time exactly ? Most of sales from Playstation consoles comes from the second half of their lifecycle. No successful console stopped being in demand after the first two years... ever

Doubt most of PS4 owners (the ones that got their consoles in the second half of the generation) are even thinking in upgrade now

The people who buy early are gaming enthusiasts, exactly the ones MORE likely to purchase another console, or to purchase an upgrade version after a soft refresh. With the main driven of Xbox sales being Series S it's as certain as the sun is hot this people will want to upgrade once the second half of generation hits and the games become more power-hungry 

This is when we will know whether Xbox is indeed more desirable or if they are just taking advantage of the lack of supply. My horses still on PlayStation, people are delusional to think Xbox is anywhere near close the mindshare Sony had outside USA

You think that XBox is going to gain 20 million customers this gen without taking any from Sony?  They both cater to the exact same console purchaser.  They both had to release Pro versions last gen to get to 116m PS4's and 50m XBox One's.  That was early adopters double dipping on a major hardware revision to boost lifetime sales.  That netted PS4 a 30m lifetime increase over the PS3, while XBox One netted around a 30m decrease from the 360 (resulting from not having a headstart, not having a pricepoint advantage, and massive self-inflicted PR flops early on).  Yet you assume that Microsoft can gain back 20m console sales without affecting PS5 sales in the slightest?  As I've said in previous posts, I have no doubt that PS5 will have healthy sales later in the gen.  But, to assume that 100m console purchases are just sitting on the sidelines right now waiting for a PS5 to drop in their lap is to live in a bubble of wishful thinking.  The XBox Series is clearly being boosted by sales of the Series S to customers who aren't going to wait for PS5 or Series X to be readily available.  A large portion of those customers aren't going to buy a PS5 when it happens to have plentiful stock down the line, because it's a big ask for the general consumer to invest in 2 highpriced consoles within years of each other.  They might even trade in their Series S for the Series X later, since they will already have been building up a catalogue of games for that system.  You don't have to think that the XBox Series will surpass the PS5 in lifetime sales to acknowledge that a boost in Series sales will definitely cut into the PS5's lifetime sales.  That's the caveat of 2 console manufacturers consistently developing similar hardware with the largest software sales coming from the same 3rd party games available on both systems.  The sales #'s of PlayStations and XBoxes has shown that play out for the past 3 generations.  It's illogical to assume that this gen will have a radically different sales correlation between the two.