Kyuu said:
I did say in the long run. It's lagging behind PS4 in sales despite much weaker competition from Xbox. One quarter is nothing. For the price, PS5 is doing great, but PC is growing much faster. PC popularity is exploding in Asia and developing countries, and it's no doubt been stealing players from consoles. Normally, people would argue a weaker competition from Xbox would feed more into Playstation because it's the "direct competitor", but evidence suggests that a lot of them are switching to PC instead. Consoles have an aging population which is problematic for growth. PC is now the cool device among teenagers, and Nintendo consoles dominate the younger demographic. While Playstation just keeps finding ways to make their consoles look optional and uncool. Over time, more and more gamers will ask themselves "why am I buying this?" It won't be as bad as Xbox mind you, but Playstation is not immune to the multiplatform strategy, so Sony has to be extra careful. If Sony moves further towards being a 3rd party publisher, they will lose more players than they gain, and the PS6 might decline considerably in sales despite Xbox's disappearance. It happened in the handheld space 2 generations ago (DS/PSP vs 3DS/Vita) and it can happen again with traditional home consoles. |
It is lagging in sales because the price is too high for a 5 year console and the price is high because the economy is fucked thanks to the pandemic. I'm not going to argue against the growth of pc but timing is everything and this generation started in the worst moment possible and yet it's only a couple millions behind.
What I would argue against is the argument of PlayStation finding ways to make their console look "optional and uncool". Two years ago there was a quite fun interview with two brothers who were top prospects for the NBA draft, asking what would be the hardest about stop living together one of the brothers answered that they played a game for the custody of the PS5 and he lost, "It feels like a break up". It's true that we live in a world were kids want a pc but it isn't because they want to play on pc, it's because they live under this stupid illusion that they can be streamers so they don't need to study, they don't need to work. What streamers are doing is manufacturing a generation of lazy mofos lol but that is a conversation for another place. The point is that there is a lot of young people who live under the laws of "being cool, being alpha" that like and buy PlayStation, they don't care about the nostalgia people who don't even like PlayStation have in mind when they talk about PlayStation. If we talk about optional or not, Sony has worked hard to build alliances with companies and event organizers, today if you want to play fighting games professionally, if you want to play madden professionally, if you want to play fifa professionally. if you want to play GT professionally, getting a PS5 isn't optional.
The huge presence of PC in Asia has always been a thing, it wasn't as big in Japan but outside Japan it has been a thing for more than a decade, that's why in games like DOTA2 before the mobile age started (yes pc can be fucked too lol, in this case mobile fucked them in a lot of countries) the best players were from Asia. Sony knows it and still they have invested in Asia more in the last couples year than in the ps4 generation and it's working. Since the banning of consoles in China PC has been their way to play videogames, literally there is no logic to think anyone can beat PC over there yet Sony has done a great job to form a playerbase and good will with alliances, a lot of presence, offering the PS platform to developers of all sizes and they cashed last year when Wukong basically was a console seller in China and the PS5 were gone from the stores.
I wouldn't compare the situation with what happened between de PSPvsDS and the Vitavs3DS either. The PSP sold a lot because it was the most affordable MP3 in the market, not because it was a good console (it was an excellent console) and the VITA lost because there was no reason to buy one just like the PSVR2 lol. PS biggest games are on pc since 2020, you just need to wait 2 years but outside that there is "no reason" to get a ps5 then why it has sold this much? Because contrary to what many people think Sony actually knows what they are doing with their console. If that move didn't kill the console it would be a little of an exaggeration to think small games like Everyone's Golf in other systems is going to kill it. Freedom Wars remastered didn't sell a lot, EG doesn't look like a best seller, Pataton is actually the biggest opportunity for both Bandai and Sony, let's see how well it sells.
Personally I hope Patapon sells a lot because if it hits nothing stops Sony from making Patapon 4, this isn't a Sunset Overdrive situation after all.
