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Kyuu on 24 November 2023
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RolStoppable said:
Kyuu said:

1. These polls were made before any knowledge about MS acquiring ABK, before knowing COVID would be limiting PS5 sales for over 2 years, and inflation keeping productions costs too high. PS5 would have crushed Xbox were it not for developments that no one in this poll took into account. Microsoft lucked out, and yet it turns out Xbox got overestimated again.

2. The poll results still show a clear underestimation of PS5's performance (you will concede when the generation ends), and an even clearer overestimation of Xbox performance. Not many people took the PC day and date damage seriously, but soon enough everyone will.

3. The more "pessimistic" Xbox predictions came more often from Playstation players (including some multiplatform users who don't play on Xbox). And the more "optimistic" PS5 predictions also came more often from Playstation fans. In other words, Playstation fans skewed the data closer to the correct prediction ranges for both systems. This generation's hardware sales are looking notably more one sided than the previous one despite Microsoft's lucky start and major acquisitions. The consensus was that it would be much closer, the consensus was wrong again.

4. PS5's temporary deals are cancelled out by unpredictable price hikes (people expected permanent pridedrops by now). Xbox Series XS's crazy deals didn't move many systems in late 2022 when PS5 finally became available in decent quantities. Series XS is simply riddled with issues and inherent flaws that a lot of people chose to ignore.

5. Switch was massively underestimated due to a poor prior generation and doubts as to whether or not Nintendo was going combine their library into one platform. And contrary to Playstation and to a smaller extent Xbox, the pandemic significantly boosted its hardware sales. But I don't think anyone argues that it wasn't underestimated. No console in the internet age was more underestimated.

1. The polls are from 2020 because that is the year that Train wreck chose.

2. This generation's oddities of limited PS5 supply followed by fulfilling pentup demand are making people go crazy in both directions. In early 2022 we had Xbox fans go bonkers and predict the bestselling Xbox ever when it should have been clear that Xbox greatly benefited from the limited PS5 supply. Now in 2023 we have PS fans think that things will continue to be as lopsided as they are in 2023, but from next year onwards the PS5 isn't going to have the benefit of the pentup demand and sales will normalize.

3. Different fanbases having a different consensus is normal, so it's not worth pointing out unless one fanbase greatly outnumbers all others. The overall consensus (and that's what Train wreck was refering to) was nowhere near as off as Train wreck suggested in his post. Said actual consensus was roughly minus 10m for PS and plus 10m for Xbox which is not a big change for a total volume of approximately 175m combined.

4. It looks like Sony adopted the morally questionable strategy of using an inflated MSRP to make their deals look a lot better than they really are, a practice that is particularly widespread among Black Friday across all kinds of products. They'll have to keep doing this at least once per quarter to keep sales high enough for additional years of 20m+ sales.

5. I added the Switch poll to provide a broader perspective. The PS5 before launch wasn't any more underestimated than Switch was after we already had 4.5 years of sales data for it.

I highly recommend that you read Train wreck's post again. It's such a rubbish post and once you acknowledge how wrongly it portrayed the year 2020, then there's really not much to argue about here.

If the consensus for sales predictions for Switch 2 ends up being 135m even if we assume that Nintendo is doing mostly everything right again, then I wouldn't complain and call that "people do expect trouble for Switch 2." But I do remember that Train wreck isn't the only guy who throws/threw a fit over the PS5 being predicted to sell "only" 105-110m units in its lifetime. I do understand people getting upset by bullshit predictions such as quickrick's for Switch or The_Liquid_Laser's for the PS5, but surely everyone realizes what world of difference there is between them and a consensus that had the PS5 sell 10m less than the PS4 and the Xbox Series X|S sell 10m more than the Xbox One.

Yes he exaggerated what the consensus thought (and mentally excluded Playstation fans it seems). Probably got annoyed by a few users and let it cloud his better judgement, I'm sometimes guilty of the same. But of the vocal community (comments), I recall quite a few respected users expecting Xbox to do at least 70-80 million units vs PS5's 90-100 million. Poll results often differ from the general comments which leave a stronger impression.

PS5's demand was met by April, and its new sales baseline is still blowing Xbox out of the water (despite 2023 being considered one of the strongest years for Xbox software as opposed to one of the weakest in Playstation history). It certainly is a possibility that the coming years will be just as if not more one-sided for PS5. We know from the leak for the revised Series X that prices will not go down anytime soon outside the temporary deals. PS5 costs Sony quite a bit less to manufacture than Series X, so unless Microsoft is willing to lose a ton on hardware (a tactic they seemingly backed off on in favor slightly better profitability), Sony is at a natural pricing advantage. A permanent PS5 pricedrop in FY 2024 + GTA6 (even as a multiplat) could easily make the next year just as dominant for Sony as 2023 was.

With that said, I don't think many Playstation fans or anyone have made up their mind about how the next years will play out. With ABK in the mix, Microsoft's acquisitions can still be a gamechanger long before the next generation starts. But it does feel that they're going to bleed millions of players over to PC.