No one is touching Songs revenue. Always a winner. Won the generation by landslide.

Imagine trying to shade the hardware numbers. In November Sony will have two consoles selling at the same time. Only PS2 managed to be relevant when PS3 launched. 7 years PS4 in the market and is doing great.

We are saying the same thing... just calling it different names.

What you call legs, I call price.

If sony drops the PS4 to $149 this year, be rest assured it would sell another 20M unit even after the PS5 launches. At the launch of the PS2, the PS1 cost under $100. The PS2 cost $149 when the $599 PS3 launched.

But my main argument is that the PS4 doesn't even need to have legs. Sony needs to get the PS5 out and have a SKU be $399, and get the price of that SKU down to $199 as soon as possible. You want as many people on the new platform buying their games directly from you with no used game market insight and not people still buying your previous console. And I can see why they are stubbornly leaving the PS4 price at $299. They may want to create a situation where you should buy a $399 PS5 instead of a $299 PS4pro slim and a discontinued PS4 slim.

And I don't feel the investment required to make a PS4 super slim and a PS4 pro slim is necessary (even though I suspect sony may still do it).That's at least $300M in R&D and retooling. That kinda money would have been better put towards subsidizing the cost of the PS5 DE and bring it in at $349 instead lol. Or hell towards some other first-party projects.

Call me crazy, but I am of the mind that if your previous console is still doing very well when the new console comes out, then something is wrong and you have a big problem.

Abysmal would mean shockingly down YOY for a console about to be replaced.

What that graph shows is how is how software & services have given them a record breaking quarter. Who would be hardware to make big portion of that pie when PS4 already peaked years ago and PS5 has been getting huge reveals all throughout the year? 

Preposterous how much people expend in DLC and MTX.

Could also be part of the reason for the rumors of a 'short' PS5 life cycle of maybe 5 years and potentially no Pro this time around. Maybe SNY see's PS5 as a transitional console gen perhaps? They could potentially focus PS6 hardware on the APU, RAM, and SSD speed, while mostly ignoring the ODD and SSD storage quantity because you won't sell many discs and won't need to store too many games, since by then most users may have worthy speeds and data caps, if any. This wouldn't be the worst way to kick off another gen for SNY, if that's the way the industry ends up by then.

If SNY goes this route, it would look to me as if they are more worried about locking down the install base instead of growing the brand. There's going to be a lot of potential consumers who won't have good enough internet in 5 to 10 years still, and they would be forced to spend more on the ODD SKU, and large expandable storage. Potentially more on data overage charges as well for day one downloads, updates, DLC, etc. Unless SNY can somewhat turn a blind to them, and open the entry streaming market to those with worthy internet by selling them a cheap streaming only console, I don't see the brand growing much in terms of install base. Profits however..

Focusing more so on PS5 and refraining from a PS4 SS and/or Pro S would fall into line with SNY's marketing so far in contrast to MS. The XBSX marketing has a fairly significant focus on the past. The PS5 marketing focus seems to be on the future. To allow PS4 to quickly fade away, wouldn't be a crazy idea as long as PS5 is cheap enough soon enough, along with PS4 BC. SNY will lose some potential sales to those waiting for a sub $300 PS4, but they would strengthen their core and present user base this way. Perhaps just let those transitioning to PS5, flood the used market with their PS4's? PS3 didn't get all that cheap late in the gen and look how that worked out for a cheap enough launch PS4. Maybe SNY will try the same thing for PS5?

A $199 PS4 SS would be really cool to see though and I don't think it would directly impact PS5 sales much. How many consumers who have $400-$500 to spend on PS5, are really going to decide to spend $199 on a PS4 SS and buy a ton of games or just save the rest instead? That is upfront money for SNY though as you stated, that could be going to a PS5 subsidy of some sort. Focusing on PS4 and allowing PS3 to quickly fade worked last time, so who knows?

I may have this misconstrued, the FY 2020 Forecast $23.48B revenue that is an estimated $17.77B more than Q1 but the profit est $2.24B is only $1.088B  more than Q1 so the estimated FY profit is less than double the Q1 result.

I'm not buying into those 5-year rumors. Well, at least not in the way it's being presented.

I believe we will see a PS6 in 5 years or so, but as you said this gen would be Transitional. I believe what would happen is that thePS6 would basically be like a glorified PS5pro. And all its games would also work on the PS5albeit at lower rez. The PS6 4K games would simply just be PS5 1080p games.

I believe the primary reason for that is partly due to what we are already seeing right now, diminishing returns. Its already getting hard to spot generational leaps between the 7-year-old PS4 and the upcoming PS5/XSX. And it would b even harder differentiating the PS5/XSX from the PS6. And if it can be avoided, I doubt sony would want to reset their generations ever again.

So I see both the PS5 and PS6 being supported, then 5 years after the PS6 is released, the PS7 comes along with support for the PS6, and at that point, the PS5 gets discontinued. They would more or less adopt a model where they are supporting two consoles at once with each console receiving active full support for up to 10 years. This way they can grow their overall install base more quickly and keep it. Because we aren't just talking about new buyers, we are talking about people that bought a PS5, want to upgrade to the PS6, and selling their still active and relevant PS5 used at a price lower than what a new PS5 would cost at the time.

I don't completely buy them either, though it depends a lot on where the world and console gaming, or gaming in general is at in 5 years time. Some newly found patents give the impression that a Pro could easily be introduced if it takes longer than they may anticipate, so SNY could then take however long they want to transition. PS5 being much stronger than PS4 at launch, should mean SNY can introduce Pro around 2024/2025 and stretch the gen to around a decade if the transition takes longer than anticipated.

It's really too far off for me to say, especially with unforeseen elections, illnesses, and everything else that many didn't see coming in advance. Though going back, your assumptions about PS5 certainly weren't out to left field, so who knows, maybe you've got SNY all figured out.

I dint think the figures show the whole truth. I think digital sales are up mostly due to store sales and offers not day one purchases of brand new games.

It would be nice to see a breakdown of digital revenue split between brand new games and games bought on sale.

I'm 38 years old, love my physical media simply since I can trade it and get some credit back for my next purchase. However, PSN sales have been so good, I've bought more older games this gen than ever before.

I wonder if this is just me, or if this is so common it makes up a chunk of digital revenue.