PS5 is 8% ahead of PS4, Xbox Series is 11% behind Xbox One in the US. Data from Mat piscatella

[Shadow1980]

Regarding adoption rates and pricing, while price cuts have almost always spurred some kind of sales growth for a console, I could see how The Big Three could be looking at how their consoles have been selling well enough at launch price to think they don't need to bother with price cuts anymore. Then again, the dawn of the 2020s was subject to market conditions that were anything but normal, with artificially high demand for video games in general combined with supply shortages for the PS5 & XBS. The growth for those systems was arguably more due to improved stock allowing for the release of pent-up demand rather than a legit spike in interest.

For example, in the U.S. the PS5 started off well, but had a very slow Q4 in 2021, followed by an nearly 25% YoY decline in Q1 2022 and a further YoY drop of almost 6% in Q2 2022. February and May of 2022 were some of the worst months ever for a PlayStation system in the U.S. during the generation proper. But from Q3 2022 to Q2 2023 we saw sales improve significantly. Holiday sales for the PS5 in 2022 weren't anything spectacular, but were still a dramatic improvement over the previous year, with sales for the quarter being up about 90% YoY. And Q1 2023 was up even more, with sales be well over twice what they were in Q1 2022. In fact, that quarter set a record for non-holiday PS5 sales in the U.S. Sales did slow in Q2 2023, but were still up YoY. Q3 2023 was about flat YoY and Q4 was slightly down, but were still strong, and combined with the strong first half the PS5 sold over 6.8M units in 2023, the third-best year ever for a PlayStation system in the U.S., behind only the PS2's 2002 (8.56M) and the PS1's 1998 (7.11M). And it accomplished this growth and strong sales with no price cuts and no new models. We never saw sales growth like this before absent some sort of stimulative factor, be it a price cut or hardware revision or some external factor.

We live in unprecedented times, and this goes for video games as well. Circumstances have been anything but normal this decade. This generation's sales dynamics were affected by supply issues far more so than any other generation. Unless there's something truly disruptive during the next generational transition, we probably shouldn't assume the PS6 & Xbox 5 will exhibit the same dynamics in their sales curves, and they may need price cuts to spur sales growth. I imagine Sony & MS will probably hold off at first to see what happens, but if sales don't exhibit any sort of growth after the first couple of years they may issue price cuts to stimulate growth.