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Forums - Sales Discussion - A little milestone that people have not noticed - the PS4 has outsold the NES

vivster on 28 June 2017
AlfredoTurkey said:

When you consider the market difference between 1985 and 2013, it's not really that impressive. It's like comparing revenue for movies and not adjusting for inflation. The NES selling 60 million units in the climate it launched in is like the PS4 selling 300 million units.

Really? Because the entertainment options in 1985 were so plenty that the NES had so much more competition than the PS4? The gaming market might have grown, but so has the competition.



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Lawlight on 28 June 2017
killeryoshis said:
AlfredoTurkey said:

When you consider the market difference between 1985 and 2013, it's not really that impressive. It's like comparing revenue for movies and not adjusting for inflation. The NES selling 60 million units in the climate it launched in is like the PS4 selling 300 million units.

You are correct(Mostly. I don't know where you get the 300 million figure from). The reason you cannot compare the NES and PS4 directly is because you need to take account of population growth, market growth and new world markets.

For instance in 1990 the US population was 249.6 million. In 2017 it is 326 million. This is about a 76 million population increase.  This does not include other countries. 

You also have to take account that the NES had to revive a whole market (North America).  So the NES couldn't burst out of the gate selling gangbusters because no one took is seriously at first. The NES peaked in 1990 just when the SNES was about to come out in 1991. (So Nintendo had to start supporting the SNES)

Also when the NES came out half of Europe was under Soviet Union's control. (They were not keen letting people play video games. ) Also Nintendo didn't really have a Nintendo of Europe until 1990. So expansion was limited there for a bit. The PS4 was released in a lot more countries then the NES  as well giving PS4 an unfair advantage to the NES. 

Now I am not trying to say the PS4 isn't going to outsell the NES but you need to take the numbers into context instead of directly comparing them.  There is more to the story then bigger number beats smaller number.

Are you not missing a few circumstances here? I dunno, like MS entering the market in a big way or mobile and PC gaming growth?



Lawlight on 28 June 2017
think-man said:
Nice, who's next in line for the PS4 to pass?

3DS is next - should happen before the end of the year.



killeryoshis on 28 June 2017
Pinkie_pie said:
killeryoshis said:

You are correct(Mostly. I don't know where you get the 300 million figure from). The reason you cannot compare the NES and PS4 directly is because you need to take account of population growth, market growth and new world markets.

For instance in 1990 the US population was 249.6 million. In 2017 it is 326 million. This is about a 76 million population increase.  This does not include other countries. 

You also have to take account that the NES had to revive a whole market (North America).  So the NES couldn't burst out of the gate selling gangbusters because no one took is seriously at first. The NES peaked in 1990 just when the SNES was about to come out in 1991. (So Nintendo had to start supporting the SNES)

Also when the NES came out half of Europe was under Soviet Union's control. (They were not keen letting people play video games. ) Also Nintendo didn't really have a Nintendo of Europe until 1990. So expansion was limited there for a bit. The PS4 was released in a lot more countries then the NES  as well giving PS4 an unfair advantage to the NES. 

Now I am not trying to say the PS4 isn't going to outsell the NES but you need to take the numbers into context instead of directly comparing them.  There is more to the story then bigger number beats smaller number.

in 1990. the population was around 5 billion im guessing. so the nes sold 60 million to 5 billion people and the ps4 is on its way to selling 120 million to 7 billion people. and its doing it against nintendo and xbox. bac k in 1990, there were only sega and nintendo

You are taking numbers without context again. There are a lot of countries that never got an NES. Ask Russia how much they played with their NES in the 80s. 
Also the NES had to compete with Atari and Sega.  Sega did such a good job in Europe that the Master System outsold the NES in Europe. 



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Lawlight on 28 June 2017
killeryoshis said:
Pinkie_pie said:

in 1990. the population was around 5 billion im guessing. so the nes sold 60 million to 5 billion people and the ps4 is on its way to selling 120 million to 7 billion people. and its doing it against nintendo and xbox. bac k in 1990, there were only sega and nintendo

You are taking numbers without context again. There are a lot of countries that never got an NES. Ask Russia how much they played with their NES in the 80s. 
Also the NES had to compete with Atari and Sega.  Sega did such a good job in Europe that the Master System outsold the NES in Europe. 

Still, nothing in comparison to the competition the PS4 faces today. I'd be happy to list them.



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Lonely_Dolphin on 28 June 2017
Pinkie_pie said:
vivster said:
Oh, people do have noticed but weirdly enough none of them has posted about it.

i think many nintendo fans did notice but for some strange reason none of them wanted to post about it

I didn't notice.

Anyway congrats to PS4 for outselling Nintendo's 2nd most successful home console. May it go on to outsell all of Nintendo's systems.

-Lonely_Dolphin



killeryoshis on 28 June 2017
Lawlight said:
killeryoshis said:

You are correct(Mostly. I don't know where you get the 300 million figure from). The reason you cannot compare the NES and PS4 directly is because you need to take account of population growth, market growth and new world markets.

For instance in 1990 the US population was 249.6 million. In 2017 it is 326 million. This is about a 76 million population increase.  This does not include other countries. 

You also have to take account that the NES had to revive a whole market (North America).  So the NES couldn't burst out of the gate selling gangbusters because no one took is seriously at first. The NES peaked in 1990 just when the SNES was about to come out in 1991. (So Nintendo had to start supporting the SNES)

Also when the NES came out half of Europe was under Soviet Union's control. (They were not keen letting people play video games. ) Also Nintendo didn't really have a Nintendo of Europe until 1990. So expansion was limited there for a bit. The PS4 was released in a lot more countries then the NES  as well giving PS4 an unfair advantage to the NES. 

Now I am not trying to say the PS4 isn't going to outsell the NES but you need to take the numbers into context instead of directly comparing them.  There is more to the story then bigger number beats smaller number.

Are you not missing a few circumstances here? I dunno, like MS entering the market in a big way or mobile and PC gaming growth?

You are right I am missing a few circumstances. The amount of games released on the PS4 is way higher than the NES recieved back in the day. Less games = less sales. 

Also PC gaming has always been around and growing. It could be argued that PC was a bigger threat back then as PC actually had exclusives that you will never find on consoles like Ultima and Wizardry. Also PC's were way more advance than anything the NES could do. I am talking about having huge open world games in 1985.  (Which were more in depth than anything the NES could munster.)  PCs were 16 bit while the outdated NES was 8 bit.  Almost every Western PC company avoided the NES because of it being outdated and harsh 3rd party restrictions. Source


Also Microsoft entering the gaming industry much as they spend billions of dollars trying to beak into the industry but can only sell in America and UK. I do not see a reason why I should take them in consideration as they don't impact the industry like population growth and openings of new markets. 

Also mobile gaming doesn't even effect Handhelds let alone big budget home console games.  Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20110603032017/http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/01/goo_3ds_survey/



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Pinkie_pie on 28 June 2017
killeryoshis said:
Pinkie_pie said:

in 1990. the population was around 5 billion im guessing. so the nes sold 60 million to 5 billion people and the ps4 is on its way to selling 120 million to 7 billion people. and its doing it against nintendo and xbox. bac k in 1990, there were only sega and nintendo

You are taking numbers without context again. There are a lot of countries that never got an NES. Ask Russia how much they played with their NES in the 80s. 
Also the NES had to compete with Atari and Sega.  Sega did such a good job in Europe that the Master System outsold the NES in Europe. 

what home console did atari have during the nes era? and how many did it sell?



killeryoshis on 28 June 2017
Lawlight said:
killeryoshis said:

You are taking numbers without context again. There are a lot of countries that never got an NES. Ask Russia how much they played with their NES in the 80s. 
Also the NES had to compete with Atari and Sega.  Sega did such a good job in Europe that the Master System outsold the NES in Europe. 

Still, nothing in comparison to the competition the PS4 faces today. I'd be happy to list them.

You mean Nintendo who made there worst system to date while also having to support the 3DS. (Sega only had to support the Master System )
Or do you mean Microsoft who can't compete unless they throw billions of dollers? At least Sega proved they can outsell the NES. Microsoft coudldn't even outsell the PS3 with a headstart and a butchered  PS3 launch. (Plus Japanese excluesive support for the 360!)

Are you going to name the growing PC market which had its teeth cut out compared to how it was in the 80s with a good amount of big budget companies made exclusives only for computers. Nowadays PC exclusives are poor compared to what they used to be. (Ok they got some indie games and strategy I suppose. But not even Blizzard is 100% pc anymore)

Are you going to name the mobile market because that's not competition ether. I don't think anyone will play Call of Duty on a mobile over a real home console. (They didn't even do it with the Wii!) 



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160rmf on 28 June 2017
Lawlight said:
John19 said:

Yes, but NES sold 61.9 million, so as I said before PS4 had a little over a million to go but it was pretty much done. Lawlight said that PS4 surpassed NES in May because there's usually 2-3 million more PS4s shipped than what are sold-through. He was basically saying PS4 outsold NES because it shipped more, but shipments aren't the same as sold-through

We always use shipment numbers when comparing numbers. Those NES numbers are shipped numbers as far as we are concerned, just like when Nintendo says 66.12M 3DS were sold. It's fair to compare them.

Yeah, there must be right now more than a million NES on the shelves waiting to be sold.

I bet you can find many available in Europe, am I right? Do you mind to share a link where I can find a "new" one?



 

 

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