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Forums - Gaming Discussion - NPD: Playstation 4 was the Best Selling Console of 2017 in the U.S.

Dallinor said:
quickrick said:

sony gave them a market with ps3, and there mistakes took a long time to correct, unlike xbone, which fixed them right away.

That's ignoring the massive efforts MS made to increase the product appeal for the 360 by pioneering multiplayer gaming on consoles, building it's online ecosystem, pushing first party franchises that were surging in popularity in the NA market (FPS, TPS) and to top if off, the use of some excellent marketing. Sony certainly dropped the ball, but MS capitalized on the space, had some foresight and tapped in to what was trending on the market.

Intrinsic said:

 

You guys seem upset.

Here, have a cookie.

Now now, hopefully I didn't bring up any undesirable emotions or feelings with my markedly unemotional response.

Intrinsic said:

Thats the thing though, no none has said that its Playstation land. All thats been said is that it won this year.

As it ddi last year.

As it did the year before that one too.....

If its winning by only 3M, then thats just the kinda generation this is. Its still winning.

I was commenting on the use of the word dominating. Sure argue semantics, yes it's winning the point is that it's had an easy ride.

The PS4 might have gigantic appeal in EU and ROTW, but there's definitely plenty of work to do in NA. Try looking at the bigger picture rather than keeping score.

I alway said Microsoft  made all the right moves that gen, while sony made all the wrong moves, and even with kinect giving 360 a huge boost in sales, the playsstation brand proved too strong to over come, and they still got out sold in the end.



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Dallinor said: 

I was commenting on the use of the word dominating. Sure argue semantics, yes it's winning the point is that it's had an easy ride.

The PS4 might have gigantic appeal in EU and ROTW, but there's definitely plenty of work to do in NA. Try looking at the bigger picture rather than keeping score.

So you don't consider winning the US by over 2:1, to losing it by over 2:1 and back to winning it as something worthy of praise?

And you talk about the bigger picture.... sheer nonsense. The real bigger picture here is that what you consider to be it being "handed" to them were all based on decisions that MS made. That Sony didn't make. Not just even talking about their policies, but down to how the hardware was built. Those decisions are also on the company you know?  win or lose, companies don't get a free pass on the choices they make. Same way how the PS3 lost market share based on design choices Sony made which dictated the price and complexity of the hardware. All things that ended up affecting Sony. Hell, circa 2012 people even were saying the PlayStation  brand was dead and the PS4 would be DOA.... and you know what? thats the same that was said about the Xbox before the 360 released and a sentiment that was carried even after release until Sony had its E3 and announced $599.

And lastly, that big picture you talk about... you cannot mention global success and in the same sentence dismiss it. The big picture, especially if you aren't trying to keep score which is literally what you are doing.... is that Sony is winning globally. Its the best selling 8th gen console by a large margin. It doesn't matter if its only 2/3M ahead in one territory, behind in another or winning in another. Globally its winning, and the big picture is that that is all the publishers care about. When you are counting money, you look at care about the total not about how many 5s or 10s you have.

It won NA in a month where the XB1 had a new SKU and a just as low priced SKU as the lowest priced PS4 SKU. No.... it doesn't have plenty to do in NA. Its done just fine so far. 

Lastly, here is another "big picture" thought for you..... Do you realize that MS would rather be 5M behind in NA if that meant they could be 5M behind in EU and only 2M behind in japan? Why/ That would mean overall they are only 12M behind the pS4 in global sales. Think about that.



Sales this year will be sooo interesting, True competition will come from all three companies. 



AlfredoTurkey said:

Wel, all I'm arguing is that one console had two more months in 2017 than the other so, unless we wall want to wax hypothetical, it's kind of meaningless. 2018, sure. But 2017 had incomplete data.

Ok..... so lets be honest here..

Are you saying taht the launch month of a console is no different from any other normal month? Because if you are gonna make the argument that one console has two months less on the market.... shouldn't you also mention that said console was launched and had its first holiday season within those 10 months?

On non "hot" months the NS averaged around 250K/month. It lost 2017 by 568k. Now even if we give it those two months at that 250k average it still loses. Butthen you have to consider something..... if this wasn't the launch year, would it have sold 900k in any normal month? My money is on no. But when it does sell up to 900k in a normal month (jan-oct) in NA over the next 4 years please feel free to call me out on that.



MasonADC said:

Sales this year will be sooo interesting, True competition will come from all three companies. 

Unfortunately this is just not the case. No matter how many here would like it to be true. Nintendo has pretty much guaranteed that the only fair way to compare sales of these consoles is in retrospect.

It makes zero sense comparing sales of a console in its 2nd year to sales of consoles 4 years older than it. Like zero sense at all.

On one hand you have a console that is new and should be on the rise towards its peak year and you are comparing it on the other hand to consoles that should have peaked and should be on the decline. 

Then there is also the market saturation thing to consider, taking the PS4 for instance, there isn't any reason why it should continue pushing 17-20M years indefinitely, its gotta saturate its market at some point.

Only fair thing we can do now is compare the respective 1,2,3....etc year sales of these consoles. And even at that we don't a real picture of the state of things until the Switch 2 is released. Because make no mistake, before the NS even gets to its 4th year, chances are extremely high that bot Sony and MS would have moved onto their next consoles.



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Intrinsic said:
AlfredoTurkey said:

Wel, all I'm arguing is that one console had two more months in 2017 than the other so, unless we wall want to wax hypothetical, it's kind of meaningless. 2018, sure. But 2017 had incomplete data.

Ok..... so lets be honest here..

Are you saying taht the launch month of a console is no different from any other normal month? Because if you are gonna make the argument that one console has two months less on the market.... shouldn't you also mention that said console was launched and had its first holiday season within those 10 months?

On non "hot" months the NS averaged around 250K/month. It lost 2017 by 568k. Now even if we give it those two months at that 250k average it still loses. Butthen you have to consider something..... if this wasn't the launch year, would it have sold 900k in any normal month? My money is on no. But when it does sell up to 900k in a normal month (jan-oct) in NA over the next 4 years please feel free to call me out on that.

The launch is indeed important and is a lot bigger than a normal month, but that doesn't change the fact that the launch year is usually some of the worst years for a console (usually, not always). So in the end the launch month is kind of meaningless in the full year when sales plummet in the months afterwards and stay low due to the small library. That's what happens most of the time when a console launches. In the case of Switch it was even worse cause it had supply issues through the whole year. On top of that, we're comparing its launch year to PS4's peak (or very close to it). 

With 2 months more last year they would be virtually tied, because like you said Switch did 250k on average on non-hot months, so we should hipotetically add another 500k to that 4.9m figure, giving something around 5.4m. Isn't that impressive? ^^ 

You know what would be a fair comparison? March 2017 to March 2018. This way we'd have full data and the same timeframe for both. I guess we'll find out soon enough.



Bet with Teeqoz for 2 weeks of avatar and sig control that Super Mario Odyssey would ship more than 7m on its first 2 months. The game shipped 9.07m, so I won

Intrinsic said:
MasonADC said:

Sales this year will be sooo interesting, True competition will come from all three companies. 

Unfortunately this is just not the case. No matter how many here would like it to be true. Nintendo has pretty much guaranteed that the only fair way to compare sales of these consoles is in retrospect.

It makes zero sense comparing sales of a console in its 2nd year to sales of consoles 4 years older than it. Like zero sense at all.

On one hand you have a console that is new and should be on the rise towards its peak year and you are comparing it on the other hand to consoles that should have peaked and should be on the decline. 

Then there is also the market saturation thing to consider, taking the PS4 for instance, there isn't any reason why it should continue pushing 17-20M years indefinitely, its gotta saturate its market at some point.

Only fair thing we can do now is compare the respective 1,2,3....etc year sales of these consoles. And even at that we don't a real picture of the state of things until the Switch 2 is released. Because make no mistake, before the NS even gets to its 4th year, chances are extremely high that bot Sony and MS would have moved onto their next consoles.

How does any of that dispute what he said?

All he said was this years numbers will be interesting and competitive.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

LipeJJ said:

The launch is indeed important and is a lot bigger than a normal month, but that doesn't change the fact that the launch year is usually some of the worst years for a console (usually, not always). So in the end the launch month is kind of meaningless in the full year when sales plummet in the months afterwards and stay low due to the small library. That's what happens most of the time when a console launches. In the case of Switch it was even worse cause it had supply issues through the whole year. On top of that, we're comparing its launch year to PS4's peak (or very close to it). 

With 2 months more last year they would be virtually tied, because like you said Switch did 250k on average on non-hot months, so we should hipotetically add another 500k to that 4.9m figure, giving something around 5.4m. Isn't that impressive? ^^ 

You know what would be a fair comparison? March 2017 to March 2018. This way we'd have full data and the same timeframe for both. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The PS4 had a very simalr launch, it too was also having stock issues. And it even had a meme that the NS has still somehow managed not to have "it has no games". So no.

Simple fact of the matter is this, regardless of however you want to look at it, we cannot talk about the swicth sales this year and compare it to sales of a 4 year old console and not take into account that the switch had more "hot months" than a year or ever two year old console would have much more a 4 year old one. Thats just fact.

And stock issues aren't really issues in the grand scheme of things, because it just means teher is a lot of demand for a certain product. And I dare say the form factors of the PS4/XB1 vs the Switch is so different, that I doubt anyone goes into a store to buy a switch and walks out with a PS4 inatead if spending the exact same amount of money. 

And lastly, even the March 2017 to march 2018 (1 year) isn't honestly a fair way to compare them. As I said earlier, Nintendo just fucked up the whole comparison battle..... (i believe they did it on purpose to fuck with us at VGC). Why wouldn't it be fair? PS4s launch and poor stock period was in November till around april 2014. If we count the PS4s first 12 months then the PS4 will still have only a launch window to show for itself and not its first holiday window. Whereas the first 12 months of the Switch has both the Launch window and first holiday window. Now because of Nintendo weird launch timeline.... best we can do is compare the first 14 months of the consoles. That way both consoles have their launch and holiday windows accounted for.



zorg1000 said:

How does any of that dispute what he said?

All he said was this years numbers will be interesting and competitive.

Talking about sales this year being interesting and true competition...... Either one stands on its own but combined they don't because thats not the case.

There is nothing interesting about comparing sales to a new console to consoles that are 4 years older than it and that should be on their way out. But I am just repeating myself now, which means you didn't much care to try and understand what I was even saying..... 



Intrinsic said:
LipeJJ said:

The launch is indeed important and is a lot bigger than a normal month, but that doesn't change the fact that the launch year is usually some of the worst years for a console (usually, not always). So in the end the launch month is kind of meaningless in the full year when sales plummet in the months afterwards and stay low due to the small library. That's what happens most of the time when a console launches. In the case of Switch it was even worse cause it had supply issues through the whole year. On top of that, we're comparing its launch year to PS4's peak (or very close to it). 

With 2 months more last year they would be virtually tied, because like you said Switch did 250k on average on non-hot months, so we should hipotetically add another 500k to that 4.9m figure, giving something around 5.4m. Isn't that impressive? ^^ 

You know what would be a fair comparison? March 2017 to March 2018. This way we'd have full data and the same timeframe for both. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The PS4 had a very simalr launch, it too was also having stock issues. And it even had a meme that the NS has still somehow managed not to have "it has no games". So no.

Simple fact of the matter is this, regardless of however you want to look at it, we cannot talk about the swicth sales this year and compare it to sales of a 4 year old console and not take into account that the switch had more "hot months" than a year or ever two year old console would have much more a 4 year old one. Thats just fact.

And stock issues aren't really issues in the grand scheme of things, because it just means teher is a lot of demand for a certain product. And I dare say the form factors of the PS4/XB1 vs the Switch is so different, that I doubt anyone goes into a store to buy a switch and walks out with a PS4 inatead if spending the exact same amount of money. 

And lastly, even the March 2017 to march 2018 (1 year) isn't honestly a fair way to compare them. As I said earlier, Nintendo just fucked up the whole comparison battle..... (i believe they did it on purpose to fuck with us at VGC). Why wouldn't it be fair? PS4s launch and poor stock period was in November till around april 2014. If we count the PS4s first 12 months then the PS4 will still have only a launch window to show for itself and not its first holiday window. Whereas the first 12 months of the Switch has both the Launch window and first holiday window. Now because of Nintendo weird launch timeline.... best we can do is compare the first 14 months of the consoles. That way both consoles have their launch and holiday windows accounted for.

Do this

PS4 launch-Dec 2014

NSW launch-Mar 2018

 

Its roughly 13 months for both and should look something like

PS4-18.5 million

NSW-~15 million



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.