I think people are really sleeping on Hogwarts which I think will be bigger than GOW and Final Fantasy. Lookinh at Fifa and the ps5 boost it offered last week we shouldn't ignore multiplats as major system sellers.

Imo there's no way they're selling less than 25m if they're able to supply those units. For games in general 2023 is looking to be one of the busiest years on record. (hopefully it stays that way)

I'll believe it when I see it. Growing from 18m to 30m would be quite explosive, and we're not even sure if 18m this fiscal year will happen yet, we are 6 months into the fiscal year and PS5 has only sold about 6.5m so far this fiscal year I think; unless they manage to sell about 9m on the 3 Holiday months (October-December), 18m for the fiscal year seems unobtainable to me.

That is an interesting take about Hogwarts. Given how bad reception was for the latest movie and the unpopularity of Rowling due to her socio-political stance, I don't think Hogwarts has a snowballs chance in hell to sell anywhere nearly as much as GoWR or FFXVI. My judgement might be influenced by me just finding Hogwarts to look absolutely uninteresting. And Harry Potter surely is big. But I just don't see it.

Would honestly not be surprised if it sells less than half of GoWR.

Not many AAA multiplats will sell better on Playstation than God of War Ragnarok if it lives up to the hype. I don't think even Elden Ring can do it (lifetime). GTA6 on the other hand may sell more on PS5 than any non-mass-bundled console game in history on an individual platform, excluding maybe MK8DX. Assuming Microsoft doesn't pay for timed exclusivity.

I think PS5 hardware sales will peak in FY 2024, the year GTA6 gets released. PS4 didn't get a native GTA game.

I doubt they can achieve that, for several reasons:

• Price increases outside of the US will hamper global demand
• Games lineup is good, but not great enough to push sales that high
• PSVr2 push probably not big enough to make a serious push to 30M

It would be great if they manage to do it, though. My expectations so far however are more moderate 24M, which is already the biggest shipment ever for Sony in a fiscal year for any console.

Eh, Hogwarts Legacy looks very meh to me. If it ends up being a good game I could see it providing a good boost in hardware for the PS5, with all of that said, Hogwarts Legacy releases in February 2023, so whatever hardware boost it provides wouldn't be included in the 2023 fiscal year anyway, which runs from April 2023 to March 2024 (as noted by the OP)

Two tidbits of information that commit the typical sins for this kind of information:

1. Production capacity is getting mixed up with shipments. We've gone through this multiple times with Switch rumors, including one that suggested that Nintendo was going to scale down Switch production in 2019 when what actually happened was that a part of the production was going to shift to a new Switch model. In any case, such rumors don't tell us much of value. Obviously, Sony is looking to increase their production capacity for PS5 consoles, we already knew as much from their official briefings.

2. David Gibson and his import data in weight have been proven to be very misleading when it came to Switch sales performance, so why should we put stock in the same guy and the same analysis when it comes to the PS5. Obviously, PS5 sales will be up year over year pretty soon and probably by significant percentages. After all, last year's supply situation went from bad to atrocious going into the holiday quarter, so we have easy year over year comparisons ahead for the PS5.

The bottom line is that this kind of news/rumors tends to generate high expectations that can't be matched.

The franchise is still huge, but a big franchise doesn't mean all endevours are massively successful (see Pokemon spinoffs like Pokken). The thing about Hogwarts is that it taps into every Harry Potters fans fantasy, its at the heart of what made the IP successful. It will have a massive fanbase amongst casual gamers, so might be hard to gauge the hype from your perspective... But to put some data to our speculation, the reveal trailer is the most watched game trailer on the playstation channels History.

1. Hogwarts 30m
2. Spiderman (E3 2016) reveal 29m
3. Marvels Spiderman 2 reveal 25m
4. Marvel Spiderman (E3 2017)
5. God of War 23m

The big variable will be quality. But if the game is good, it will easily trump almost all AAA releases we see next year. 

The most successful games give permanent/longterm boosts to hardware and their is a cumulative effect as more system sellers arrive on the platform. See Nintendo Switch sales which are the result of a collection of wide appealing games (Mario Kart/Animal Crossing etc).

Essentially I expect Hogwarts to be topping the charts in many different points throughout the year and driving hardware beyond its launch month. Infact because I see it as more of a casual appealing title, I don't expect its launch numbers to be insane, more its legs.

Wow! Colour me absolutely surprised! Did not expect at all that Hogwarts would have that amount of views. I think you are right that it is hard for me to gauge the hype.

I guess we will see. I hope of course that it turns out to be an excellent game. But I have a bad feeling about it for some reason. Combat looks blah to me. Not that this proved to be all important for general audiences in the past. But also the characters seem off brand for some reason. I don't know.