By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Sales Discussion - Sony no longer reporting PS4 shipments, Final Official total 117.00m

 

Will PS5 outsell PS4

Yes 23 23.71%
 
No 74 76.29%
 
Total:97
ironmanDX said:
Kakadu18 said:

Collapsed way faster than anyone expected beforehand.

Which is even crazier considering the shortages for the new systems...

The 2 things are correlated though, there have been almost no PS4's in production since 2021 and think it probably is partially due to limited production resources 



Around the Network

Such underestimating of the PS5 here, but we shall see in time.
The situation of the world has completely warped the optics here, so it's kind of pointless to announce winners and losers at this point. Everything has been affected, from when to cut off PS4, to how much PS5s are out there, to what games will be cross-gen and what not because of the stunted rate of moving to PS5. Everything is out of whack right now.



Kyuu said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

Demand was much greater due to Covid. Not sure if it is still that much greater than PS4/XBO at the same time period after launch.

Also, this could just mean that the systems are more front-loaded. Having a big start doesn't have to mean it will last for a long while, just look at the Wii.

As for the PC part, I think that's the reason why Playstation plus Xbox totals have been constantly dropping each generation, but I don't think the PC will cut the legs of this gen short.

PS360 was an unusually long generation that also partly appealed to a temporary demographic via Kinect (which sustained X360 sales in later years). PS4 and Xbox One's sales weren't inflated by longer lifespans or Kinect, not to mention last generation was hampered by Xbox ONE, arguably Microsoft's worst console. They were however inflated by mid-gen upgrades. I think "traditional gaming" as a whole is seeing a huge growth, but this growth is mostly felt if PC is part of the equation. Modern PC is essentially a customizable console and appeals to a large part of the traditional console crowd. A scenario where all consoles + PC grow in sales combined AND individually isn't impossible.

The thing is, if PC would be so detrimental to consoles, then they would have eaten them already before the launch of the PS4. PS360 got severely bashed even back then for being stuck in the past with ugly graphics that even weak PCs in 2008 could beat without a fuss. The Radeon HD 4670 and GeForce 9600 GSO both were way more powerful than the GPUs in the consoles despite costing less than $100 MSRP (Radeon $79, GeForce $89). Paired with an Athlon 64 X2 4800 ($104 in 2007) and 2GiB DDR2 ram (~$80), cheap mainboard, PSU and case and you had a PC capable of beating the consoles in every way for less than $400.

@bolded: This has been true basically since the inception of 3D graphics. In fact, many of console's biggest 3rd party titles originated on PC (Fifa, GTA, Crysis, CoD...) an only later got ported to consoles. But for many years, the simplicity and cheap entry price of consoles meant that the move was the other way around, away from PC and to consoles. It's only starting the late 2000's that the trend got reversed somewhat and PC getting former console exclusives.

Part of the reason is that because consoles are basically stuck in time, they simply can't keep up with the ever evolving PC. Current gen consoles are comparable to mid-range PCs right now, next year they will be closer to entry-level PCs already. And since the hardware is practically the same, it also means that the same tricks for boosting performance on consoles which helped them keep up with the PC over time now also work for the most part on PC, negating the bonus.

@italic: It's not impossible of course, but like you explained yourself, they're competing with each other for the same market. Which means that for actors in the market to grow, the market needs to grow. Right now, the gaming market is mostly growing due to DLC and microtransactions, and most of it is on mobile devices, hardware sales are not growing by much if we take out the increase in price of PC hardware. I think this diagram says it all:

As you can see, while in absolute numbers PC + consoles did grow, they only did marginally so over the course of a decade. In other words, don't expect much market expansion over the next couple years.



Bofferbrauer2 said:

The thing is, if PC would be so detrimental to consoles, then they would have eaten them already before the launch of the PS4. PS360 got severely bashed even back then for being stuck in the past with ugly graphics that even weak PCs in 2008 could beat without a fuss. The Radeon HD 4670 and GeForce 9600 GSO both were way more powerful than the GPUs in the consoles despite costing less than $100 MSRP (Radeon $79, GeForce $89). Paired with an Athlon 64 X2 4800 ($104 in 2007) and 2GiB DDR2 ram (~$80), cheap mainboard, PSU and case and you had a PC capable of beating the consoles in every way for less than $400.

@bolded: This has been true basically since the inception of 3D graphics. In fact, many of console's biggest 3rd party titles originated on PC (Fifa, GTA, Crysis, CoD...) an only later got ported to consoles. But for many years, the simplicity and cheap entry price of consoles meant that the move was the other way around, away from PC and to consoles. It's only starting the late 2000's that the trend got reversed somewhat and PC getting former console exclusives.

Part of the reason is that because consoles are basically stuck in time, they simply can't keep up with the ever evolving PC. Current gen consoles are comparable to mid-range PCs right now, next year they will be closer to entry-level PCs already. And since the hardware is practically the same, it also means that the same tricks for boosting performance on consoles which helped them keep up with the PC over time now also work for the most part on PC, negating the bonus.

@italic: It's not impossible of course, but like you explained yourself, they're competing with each other for the same market. Which means that for actors in the market to grow, the market needs to grow. Right now, the gaming market is mostly growing due to DLC and microtransactions, and most of it is on mobile devices, hardware sales are not growing by much if we take out the increase in 

As you can see, while in absolute numbers PC + consoles did grow, they only did marginally so over the course of a decade. In other words, don't expect much market expansion over the next couple years.

Humm

But this graph is showing consoles revenue went from 31.77 to 39.62

I wouldn't call it marginally, it's a 24.7% increase in 9 years. Console prices stayed the same, game prices stayed the same. Console sales decreased (partially because less consoles were released, with Sony extinction of handheld line and Sony combining their two lines)

Yet revenue is up

This means average spending of the console gamer increased 

If all we want is to increase the number of consoles sold, we don't actually need ⁶more buyers, just need to convince people who is already spending more to buy another console which seems feasible as long both consoles are desirable and with cheap software 



I remember arguing with people who thought the PS4 was going to have PS2 like legs and eventually outsell the PS2. Obviously was never going to happen. The price was never going to get to where it needed to be, it didn't have anywhere near the same market dominance, didn't have emerging markets to break into, and I honestly don't think it was in Sony's best interest to keep pushing it, even ignoring things like the chip shortage.

But 100+ million units is nothing to sneeze at.



Around the Network
Norion said

It's not bias to think the PS5 will sell less than the PS4. The latter did fantastic so thinking the former will do great but not outright fantastic really shouldn't come across as bias when the competition is a lot stronger this time. Also Sony expecting something doesn't mean it's gonna happen and even if it regains the lead it can still lose it again years later since sales curves can differ a lot.

100%. I mean, the market is full of high expectations. Nintendo thought the Wii U would sell 100M units. EA thought Anthem would be a success. Sony thought they would take over the portable market with the PSP. None of these things happened because the videogame market is way more unstable than people predict. You can go from selling 250M+ consoles and selling almost 2 billion in software one generation (Wii + DS) to selling less than 90M consoles and less than 500M units of software the next (Wii U + 3DS).

No one is saying the PS5 will be a failure, that would be absurd. But it's absolutely reasonable to expect Sonys lofty expectations may not be met.



IcaroRibeiro said:

Humm

But this graph is showing consoles revenue went from 31.77 to 39.62

I wouldn't call it marginally, it's a 24.7% increase in 9 years. Console prices stayed the same, game prices stayed the same. Console sales decreased (partially because less consoles were released, with Sony extinction of handheld line and Sony combining their two lines)

Yet revenue is up

This means average spending of the console gamer increased 

If all we want is to increase the number of consoles sold, we don't actually need ⁶more buyers, just need to convince people who is already spending more to buy another console which seems feasible as long both consoles are desirable and with cheap software 

Revenue increased as a function of microtransactions I would imagine. People don't buy games and consoles in an addictive way, but they do with microtransactions. In fact, Sony makes more in microtransactions than they do physical and digital game sales combined.



Doctor_MG said:
Norion said

It's not bias to think the PS5 will sell less than the PS4. The latter did fantastic so thinking the former will do great but not outright fantastic really shouldn't come across as bias when the competition is a lot stronger this time. Also Sony expecting something doesn't mean it's gonna happen and even if it regains the lead it can still lose it again years later since sales curves can differ a lot.

100%. I mean, the market is full of high expectations. Nintendo thought the Wii U would sell 100M units. EA thought Anthem would be a success. Sony thought they would take over the portable market with the PSP. None of these things happened because the videogame market is way more unstable than people predict. You can go from selling 250M+ consoles and selling almost 2 billion in software one generation (Wii + DS) to selling less than 90M consoles and less than 500M units of software the next (Wii U + 3DS).

No one is saying the PS5 will be a failure, that would be absurd. But it's absolutely reasonable to expect Sonys lofty expectations may not be met.

Another good example is the goal to sell 200 million units of the Xbox One. I think Sony will see their expectations be met a lot better the next couple years but overtaking the PS4 and staying ahead will be very tough.



Doctor_MG said:

Revenue increased as a function of microtransactions I would imagine. People don't buy games and consoles in an addictive way, but they do with microtransactions. In fact, Sony makes more in microtransactions than they do physical and digital game sales combined.

Do you have a breakdown of how much Sony makes with games, services and digital content?

Services can be a great value proposition, one of the reasons why Xbox software sells so much worse compared to Sony in market where their hardware sales are close (UK) is because Xbox userbase is mostly using digital and services. A change in the focus from sales to subscription can lead gamers to spend more on hardware while less on software. So far PS5 has been really really supply constrained, but when the sales have a spike we don't see a decrease in Xbox sales. So either this generation will be significantly more frontloaded or people are indeed buying more consoles.



So where does that put it on the all time home-console list, third? Can someone supply me with a top five list (no portables; home consoles only)?