Your prediction about PS5 collapse comes from nowhere. If you turn to be right, I will personally create a thread apologizing if you please.

It won't happen anyway 

Consoles are selling a lot this week, because there has been a shortage, and now more hardware is available.  There is pent up demand.  Once that demand is met, sales will drop.  That is a reasonable assumption.  That is not from "nowhere".  That's actually what happens whenever there is a hardware shortage.

If you are talking about PS5 lifetime sales, there are plenty of warning signs that it's not going to sell anywhere near what PS4 will sell.  If you think there are no signs, then you are simply choosing to ignore the information that is plainly there.

Globally in Japan is a thing now I see.
Globally the PS5 is moving a lot of software. Japan is the exception, not the rule.
What points to the PS4's and PS5's sales being influenced by the Switch anywhere outside of Japan?
Extrapolating worldwide data from one single country doesn't work. No matter what country it is.

There is also nothing pointing to the PS5 sales dropping off significantly next year. We do not know how high the pent up demand is and several major exclusives have yet to be released which will create more demand.

You'll need more data than that, @The_Liquid_Laser
Up until then, you're a cliff theorist.

PS5 is selling a lot whenever is enough stock available. Not only this week, but in a couple of past weeks and this will holds true for the foreseeable future.

Your theory is that a console that have yet to get exclusives or even the best selling software in this generation is collapsing in sales just because... reasons. You keep bringing JP software sales to make predictions  about a console that sold more than eleven times more outside Japan than inside last generation and call this evidence. 

I will no longer engage this discussion about you being a cliff theorist as it's starting to get personal and I don't intend to make you feel uncomfortable, ashamed or mocked. I was trying to make a joke but I might have overextended myself, I apologize for this. 

The difference between you and me is that I am actually using data.  Where is your data?  Do you have hard numbers for anything outside of Japan?  You criticize me for relying on data from one country, when you are relying on data from 0 countries.  You shouldn't call people names when you are doing something even worse.

Also, I've never said the Switch was competing with the PS4.  I've always said it is competing with the PS5.

I am saying that it is software that sells hardware.  You seem to think something else sells hardware.  I find that ridiculous.

Also, I've given reasons.  PS5 is competing with both XBS and Switch. 

Why would the Switch compete with the PS5 but not the PS4? Now you're making even less sense.

Your argument is based on Japan only. We know for a fact that software is selling well on the PS5 outside of Japan. Sony has been reporting healthy software shipments and from many new releases the PS5 version in several countries has been the leading version. That shows that software is not just as dead everywhere as it is in Japan.

You behave like those people who proclaim that a JRPG is a flop based on it's UK performance only to be surprised when it's actually a success.

In the US the X360 outsold the Wii and completely destroyed the PS3. But worldwide it was the lowest selling of the three.

The PS4 sold only a very small part of it's worldwide numbers in Japan. The same is happening with the PS5. Basing everything on that small pool is insufficient.

You like pretending like we have only data from Japan as if we have zero clue of how the PS5 is selling elsewhere. PS5 games (that are not HFW) are charting regularly in many countries.

The biggest exclusives for the PS5 haven't even released yet, but you predict the PS5 to crater right when they do release. That is opposite to your idea that software sells hardware.

The difference between you and me is that I'm actually able to use the data I have correctly and don't make illogical assumptions based on way to small data pools that clearly and for everyone to see behave differently from all other regions.

I call you a cliff theorist, and will keep calling you that, because I believe that your arguments are based on logical fallacies and subconcious bias.

I know this won't convince you, nothing will, so goodbye, I'm not going to answer again in this thread concerning this topic. You just see what you want to see.

I don't get how you can go on about software selling hardware but think the PS5 will sell more this year than the year GTA 6 comes out. That, other big third party games and big first party ones are gonna push hardware hard in the next few years and it should be increasingly easy to get a PS5 from this point so things very strongly point to sales increasing, not decreasing.

Also we for sure won't have to wait till the end of next year to know who is right. PS5 + Xbox Series will surpass 40m soon and with stock significantly improved now and a holiday season coming up it'll for sure be over 50m in just a few months and in all likelihood over 56m before the 2nd half of 2023. My issue isn't that you're making wild predictions, it's that you're doubling down on them long after it's clear it's not gonna turn out that way. You should be able to look at the data and see that the PS5 + Xbox Series is currently almost the same as what the PS4 + Xbox One were at launch aligned and that the former have been selling more lately so instead of waiting for them to surpass 56m you should re-evaluate your predictions for this gen now since it's clear they're extremely off.

117m seems good, congrats PS4.

This has probably been mentioned already, but I imagine the lack of price cuts due to semiconductor shortages, inflation, covid, etc had an influence on the overall sale figure.
I picked up a PS4 slim 500gb when it was new back in 2016 for £200, bundled with a newly released game, 6 years later, google tells me it's selling for £150 or more and that's without the additional game. So barely any change after almost 6 years.

On another note, I've noticed that the PS5 price has only recently gone back to the default launch price of £449.99, it was either £550/£600 or out of stock a couple of months back. Buying stuff has sucked in recent years.

We can see from the numbers we have in 2017, 2018, etc that Switch's rise did not gouge into PS4's sales. The two coexisted rather than directly competing. There's no reason PS5 should be any different. They are totally different products, like family cars and motorbikes or Call of Duty and Mario.

Japan is just one country. The world at large is very different as we can see from regional breakdowns.

PS5 + XS combined are now over 38 million; that means they would have to sell less than 18 million more over the next 16 months (which includes two holiday seasons) for our bet to go the way you forecast. Do you honestly think that's likely at this point?