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Forums - Gaming Discussion - PS4: The New King of Digital Sales?

The_BlackHeart__ on 04 January 2017

It is more than obvious that nobody can touch Steam when it comes to digital sales numbers.

But I felt the need to recognize the impressive work and effort that Sony has made during the last 3-4 years on the digital department.

 

Not only they managed to win back their customer's trust on their network, but also found a way to position the PlayStation Store  as the prefered platform on the consoles realm.

 

Let's be honest, nobody gave a damn about the PSN 5 years ago, it was never relevant as a storefront platform compared to XBox Live.

And certainly lacking a lot of important features, being down for constant maintenance or even getting hacked didn't help much.

 

But somehow, Sony listened, they humbled their $hit up and made critical adjustments. Thanks to Amazon, here is a quick comparison of the evolution of the PlayStation brand as a digital service within the last 7 years.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2010/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2011/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2012/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2013/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2014/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2015/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2016/videogames#1

 

There is a reason why winning 2016 has a deeper meaning:

This is the year Microsoft did everything right. Phil Spencer even decided to expand the positivities of XBoxLive into millions of PCs, which is probably the strongest move the XBox brand has done this generation. Besides of course supporting digital backwards compatibility and including a BluRay player on their latest model. To wrap up, a 10/10 year for Phil.

 

And yet, the PS4 managed to enter this new year as the top software seller on both retail and digital.

 

The game is changing in 2017 as 2 big challengers enter the market, can the Switch or the Scorpio stop the PS4's momentum?



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Hapuc12 on 04 January 2017

Switch Hardly because they are going with cartridges instead of Discs and switch wont have that much memory(my speculation) for digital games I mean isn't gears 4 like 70 gigs and ton of games go above 45-50 gigs so imo Nintendo hardly in digital department.

But Xbox could,if they change the momentum to Scorpio and for xbox to become the most sought out console and become the standard instead of Playstation,wait for e3 and let's see how they will present the Scorpio.

tl:dr
Nintendo-Hardly
Microsoft if they derail the Ps4 momentum with more savage games and better press.



kitler53 on 04 January 2017

well certainly alot of it isn't specific to psn but rather just evolving consumerism (to digital) in combination with ps4 being the dominate console of the generation.


...but. i've been 100% digital only on psvita and ps4. sony did a lot to make the network a pleasure to use when they moved from ps3 to ps4.



Jizz_Beard_thePirate on 04 January 2017

Honestly, considering all the hacked nonsense I keep on hearing about with psn accounts on neogaf and the reddit page and etc... I buy the cards because I don't feel safe to put my credit card information on psn. With steam on the otherhand, I never buy the giftcards and always use my credit cards instead.

Not to say consoles and digital havn't been improving over the years but its the reason why I buy those cards



                  

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Hapuc12 on 04 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
Hapuc12 said:

Switch Hardly because they are going with cartridges instead of Discs and switch wont have that much memory(my speculation) for digital games I mean isn't gears 4 like 70 gigs and ton of games go above 45-50 gigs so imo Nintendo hardly in digital department.

But Xbox could,if they change the momentum to Scorpio and for xbox to become the most sought out console and become the standard instead of Playstation,wait for e3 and let's see how they will present the Scorpio.

tl:dr
Nintendo-Hardly
Microsoft if they derail the Ps4 momentum with more savage games and better press.

I hope you mean that cards instead of discs is a disadvantage for digital sales because cards have a higher collector's value than discs. Please say it is so.

As for 2017, the answer should be a foregone conclusion, given the advantage in installed base that the PS4 will have throughout the year.

I don't know what i was going with this answer,and yup cards have a bigger collector value in my eyes then discs.

But from what i see with Nintendo Switch how much can they put memory in that Console 128gigs could they even put 256gigs,console looks small tbh.

And yup about base advantage forgot about that.



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Teeqoz on 04 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
The PS Store is the prefered storefront for buying digital PS4 games?

It truly is shocking.



jason1637 on 04 January 2017

Well with 50% marketshate it should have the highest digital salea.



d21lewis on 04 January 2017

I think more and more people are seeing the benefits of digital and the PS4 is the best selling home console.



AngryLittleAlchemist on 04 January 2017

I mean most people have PS4's so ... no duh?



Hapuc12 on 04 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
Hapuc12 said:

I don't know what i was going with this answer,and yup cards have a bigger collector value in my eyes then discs.

But from what i see with Nintendo Switch how much can they put memory in that Console 128gigs could they even put 256gigs,console looks small tbh.

And yup about base advantage forgot about that.

Current micro SD cards can hold 128GB at an affordable price (quick look on Amazon shows them at €40-50), the 256GB variant is still very expensive. There isn't much physical space needed to pack in a notable amount of storage and Switch games aren't going to take up as much space as PS4 and XB1 games. I expect the vast majority of games to come in comfortably under the size of a single-layer Blu-ray disc, so under 25GB. Most games should be under 10GB because Nintendo themselves have programmed very storage-friendly while Japanese third parties are more used to 3DS/Vita limits (games under 2GB for the most part) and Western third parties will first and foremost port seventh gen games that fit on dual-layered DVDs (~9GB). So 128GB of storage for Switch would be at least as acceptable as 500GB was for PS4 and XB1, although I'd expect Nintendo to ship Switch with either a 32GB or 64GB which would be sufficient for most people already. (Physical Switch games won't have mandatory installs.)

There is also nothing that speaks against firmware updates that enable the system to support SD cards with bigger capacities in the future. The normal SD cards are already experimenting with 2TB, but the prices are nowhere near massmarket-friendly yet. I am not sure which kind of SD card Switch will support (the original 3DS supported normal SD cards, the New 3DS micro SD cards), but capacities of up to 256GB aren't unrealistic, even at launch.

Well best thing i like is no mandatory install just put in and play.

Yup i see it's not that expensive,but games today have too much gigs in them like i said,but i don't want to be doom and gloom we will all see at the press event in 7-8 days when is it 12th i think.