As incredible as its record launch was, it was very unlikely it could beat NS at its best during its first full year, 18M is a very respectable achievement for a powerful, but quite expensive console. 18M so early is quite an achievement for production capacity too. That PS4, NS and PS5 reach their peaks in different years, so disturbing each other as little as possible, is good for the gaming industry as a whole too, BTW.

If it had launched at any time of year it would have sold out. They sold everything they could ship.

That would put the PS5 at 20+ Million lifetime by the end of 2021, comfortably ahead of the Switch & the PS4, when aligning sales. Looks like the social media metrics were a good indicator of hype lol.

So you don't think there were people out there buying it simply because of the holidays and because of deals? Not a single % of the purchases were made because of either of those two factors? If you think it would have sold the same in March then you must not think anyone bought it for those two reasons.

Hi @PotentHerbs 

If you strictly align the first 14 months of both consoles, then yes, it would be ahead of the switch (~16.5M) but it is kind of unfair because the PS5 would have two holiday periods to sell. If we look at what the switch sold its first 12 months and then add the next November and December, the switch sold 22.9M, making it a pretty nice race. 

A good comparison is the first 12 months for both consoles, that way both get the same amount of holidays. In that case, the switch sold 15M in 12 months.

Hi @Dulfite I am not sure @Dallinor is saying what you are assuming. The way I understand Dallinor is that he is saying that There are currently more people wanting to purchase a PS5, so if for example Sony had 5 million units for sale, all of them would be purchased.

He is also saying that if it was released in March, then those same 3 million consoles would be sold because there is still more than 3 million people interested in buying it no matter what. 

That statement doesn't mean that he thinks that no one wants it just for the holidays, I am sure that a lot of people that bought it now, that would not buy it if it released on March, but those units would be purchased by other hardcore fans that currently couldn't buy one.

In other words, he believes that there are more than 3 million hardcore fans that would buy the console if it released on any month.

Is this assumption correct @Dallinor ?

That's a good point. Although I think the PS5 will clear 15+ Million by November 2021. 

The ps5 sold out into 2021 in majority of areas soon as pre order went up months before the holidays....

I guess that sounds reasonable. This first year of the PS5 will be interesting. It has potential to have a great first year with the list of upcoming titles known. Though whether or not they’ll release in 2021 will be up in the air as AAA development can be unpredictable at times we have seen this year alone. If a good amount of them are planning to be shipped to Japan, then I wonder what the sell through will be in the country as the system has gained little traction this holiday, even with the supply constraints. There really hasn’t been an indication that the PS5 software are building any kind of momentum in digital sales in Japan. Physical sales you can forget about it. Will the promise of more continue to help the PlayStation as it did with the PS4 when it initially launched?

There were no PS5 deals and the system pretty much sold out the majority of its holiday allotment prior to the November launch. Getting a PS5 was essentially a lottery, of course some lucky people may have got it for partners/family/friends or even themselves as holiday gift but there was clearly many more people who wanted to get the system unrelated to the holiday who couldn't. Even if 10% of PS5 launch sales were holiday driven purchases, there was much more demand unrelated to the holiday which cannot be fulfilled and thus the system will have stock issues until at least spring (highlighted by sony, retailers & analysts)

Whenever this system launched it was going to sell out

Perhaps a bit much, but het the PS4 managed to sell over 13 million units in its first year. The PS5 has a much better lineup than the PS4 in 2014, so Sony predicting more sales isn't unrealistic.