| RolStoppable said:
It definitely looks like a 20m+ year now. My original prediction was the 18-20m bracket because I didn't expect Sony to be able to get rid of their production shortages for the full extent of twelve months. But their revised forecast for the January to March quarter (which became news only after this thread was created) already showed the general direction for calendar year 2023 and Sony's forecast for the current fiscal year cements it. With Microsoft being as weak as they are, there's not much of a reason to doubt that Sony can meet their forecast, even if Sony's first party "games as a service" initiative flops for the most part or even entirely. Speaking of Microsoft, the prediction thread for them was based on them having a ~9.5m year in 2022, but I've noticed that later on VGC adjusted down in the ballpark of 1m units. Originally I had pegged 2023 as a 10-11m year for Microsoft (a modest increase), but by now even being up at all looks like a serious challenge. And being flat would now mean ~8.5m instead of ~9.5m. In other words, it's possible that Xbox gets outsold by PS by a full 3:1 ratio in favor of Sony in 2023. |
Yes the adjustments down have certainly had a big effect on predictions for Xbox. -30% hardware revenue in the first quarter and MS's forecast for the next quarter seem to imply they expect hardware to be down YoY again. It's looking like they may need a very strong holiday quarter, +25% or more YoY, with Starfield and Forza just to match last year.
Generally it seems PlayStation was under-estimated due to not expecting such high shipments were possible or that unmet demand was that high. Xbox was over-estimated due to not expecting such a poor start to the year and in general the Switch predictions seem like the most accurate, barring any coming surprises from Nintendo that could change this.
