PS5 Ships 41.7 Million Units as of June 2023

[Kyuu]

Slownenberg said:

I'm guessing Sony made the mistake of taking their phenomenal winter numbers this year and thinking they could hold those sorts of numbers beyond that. But of course this past winter is when Sony finally ended stock shortages and flooded the market with PS5s so there was two years of pent up demand that scooped up all those systems. That pent up demand was satiated after that quarter so now they are back to 'normal' Playstation numbers (~20m peak years) but Sony thought they were about to have a year like they've never had before because of that one quarter of pent up demand.

Going into this fiscal year PS5 had a one-off amazing quarter while Switch had a weak quarter. Sony's pent up demand was satisfied while Switch then got double boosted from Mario movie and TotK. Now we are looking at a situation in which Sony likely massively overestimated what they can sell this year while Nintendo likely somewhat understimated what they will sell this year. They forecasted 15m and 25m but they'll probably end up around 16m and 20m.

Though Sony is apparently willing to get aggressive, even early in the lifecycle, on stuff like price cuts, which Nintendo hasn't even bothered with after 6+ years. But PS5 is gonna need those price cuts to even hit 20m. Seeing as how they are getting aggressive about pushing systems and not worrying about profit as much I think Sony can sell 20 or 21m this year. I'm guessing PS5 will have big discounts for the holidays.

Temporary pricecuts after over 2 years, and following an entire year of a price hike, isn't "early in the lifecycle". These deals aren't even that aggressive. PS5 just overperformed to the point of making Sony slightly more confident than they should be for this particular quarter, but it's probably nothing they can't remedy. They will still hit or come close to hiting their target.

The revision should cost less to manufacture and ship, which should offset the reduction of profitability sooner or later. Considering the high price tag, PS5 is on another level than PS4 overall. Hardware profitability was never Sony's focus.