Time will tell, really. 

One can guess what will happen if PS4 would be Japan-only until mid 2014.

I guess Sony would stop production of the PS4 already.

EXACTLY!!!!

This little fact is something that all that makes that claim just ignores.

To put it into perspective, by its third year PS2 shipments in japan were over 12M!!!! Thats more in 3 years than it took the PS3 to do in its lifetime.

Currently PS4 sales in japan is just around 4M

I wonder what the average weekly sales in China are?

Who would imagine that the game division one day to be Sony´s life boat?

The sad part about Sony Pictures is that it doesn´t matter how "well" managed a studio is, they can never be sure to have a winning formula - unless you have a strong franchise.

There is no Bond films in the horizon and the Spider-Man deal with Disney is still a mistery. Even Paramount that had a horible year will make a lot with another Transformers movie.

User was moderated for this post - Zekkyou

They will propably sell it, with Mobile, in the future.

No more charity for losers.

It's not downplaying. PS4 had EU and NA in the same month and Japan only 3 months later. If you align the regions launches, PS2 is a bit ahead. This points that PS4 won't beat PS3 numbers, which is reasonable. PS4 will probably do anything between 120 to 130M. People normally say that this is because its sales are front loaded, but in reality it is selling a tiny bit slower than PS2.

Saying that something is a bit behind PS2 isn't downplaying. PS2 did those numbers because it had 2 dead oponents. X1 at least puts up a bit of a fight, enough to avoid letting PS4 be as dominant as PS2. If PS3 also had a scenario like PS2 did, it would be way above 100M easily.

This actually speaks a lot about PS4 health. If it was really above PS2 and ended up falling short, it would result in a Wii scenario. It actually has a similar pace, so it's a healthy platform.

Of course, my prediction also doesn't consider the impact of Switch, but I think it will be negligible since it will appeal to a different market.

Nintendo sales does not affect PS/Xbox sales in reality, especially if we talk about handhelv vs home console. This is simple another, different market.

If Wii/Wiiu sales are anything close to a factor, bots X1 and PS4 shall do gangbang sales and PS3/360 shall got numbers like... a Wii U ?

But another very important factor to consider is the changing kandscape o the game market. Back in 2000, the PS2 released in japan first. With the PS4, it released in NA first and then japan 3 months later.

Back in the PS2 era, after the third year there were already 12M PS2s shipped in japan. Thats more in 3 years than the PS3 managed in its entire life over there and the PS4 has only managed to do a third of that amount in the same amount of time (though PS4 sales are sold through not shipped).

Either way, the fact remains that japan is nowhere near as big a market for sony as it was back in the PS1/PS2 era.

launch aligning things is irrelevant if not comsiderring the state of the respective markets.

I will try.

PS2 ( Jap March 2000, USA October 2000 ) launched before Xbox OG ( November 2001 ) and Gamecube (  December 2001 ). PC gaming was a dirty mess back in the days. 299$ is the price.

PS4 launched after WIi U, same month as Xbox One. PC gaming is strong.399$ is the price.