Otter said:
My argument wasn't that it will be the best selling for months, simply that demand is pent up and way outstrips supply (which current software sales can't reflect) and a retailer said its 30x higher than current demand, which they did. We know it's supply constraint, so using a year worth of supply constraint sales data is a bit pointless in discussing actual "demand" or peak potential sales we could hypothetically see in a week without contraints. We have plenty of data points to look to like lotteries, being constantly sold out, being sold for high prices on Amazon JP, randomly fluctuating sales according to supply alone, hardware that thats not impacted by its biggest software releases. This mountain of evidence is why their stances demanding "proof" that there is much higher demand than current sales show, doesnt seem reasonable if we're taking the wider picture into account. It's more or less denial at this point. |
I'd agree that demand far outstrips supply without question. PS5 is supply-constrained everywhere and Japan is one of the worst off. However, with the supply so small it's hard to say how big demand actually is. The 30x the weekly amount could be the extent of the demand or it could be only the tip of the iceberg. Trouble also comes considering that PS5 is supply-constrained everywhere and some of the Japanese demand could be resellers for the East Asian market outside of Japan.
This is where software sales enter into it, because even the highest selling PS5 game has a less than 10% physical attach rate and the beginning of a console's life is typically where the attach rates are highest. Now, that factor is complicated by digital sales and backwards compatibility with PS4 titles, but then PS4 titles are declining in sales rather than increasing so that seems unlikely. Digital titles are the big question as I haven't seen numbers on those, but in general the PS brand has been on a decline in Japan since the PS2. PS4 bounced back a little compared to the Vita, but the Vita was so mismanaged that that's no surprise. I don't think the PS5 will crash and burn, but another decline from PS4's 9.4 million to about 7-8 million seems reasonable.







