In 6 to 8 months we will be going through that again with the next Nintendo console

Of the reported 93k PS5 units reported sold this week how many do you estimate were bought with the intention of being shipped outside of Japan? And to which countries?

That's hard to guesstimate, but I think somewhere between 30k and 55k this week are shipped outside of Japan, mainly to China. How much exactly is hard to pinpoint without additional datasets.

30k to 55k is around 30-60% of sales this week.

Do you think the same applies to lifetime sales?

For lifetime sales, I expect way over 50% to have been shipped to other countries like China. Historically it 's probably more like 60%-80%.

PS5 is gaining steam in Japan the last couple months, so I expect the amount of consoles shipped overseas from Japan to be getting lower over time. But as long as China allows this kind of parallel import of the console, It will never fully go away.

It's also not just the PS5 that is affected, also the XS and Switch. But their numbers are much lower compared to the PS5, as Switch users don't miss out that much in China and the Xbox isn't exactly popular over there in China, either.

I think Rol told me over 1-2m of Switch is Grey Market in China, IIRC. XS yeah, tiny market.

In May 2022, Sony confirmed Official Chinese sales were 670k. I imagine official sales are at least 1m by now. If you think half of LTD of Japan is Chinese sales, that would put China at around 2.4m with 1.4m being grey market (already rivaling Switch) , leaving Japan with 1.4m. That means China is beating Japan by far with a 1m lead already. It seems dubious because, Japan was Ps4's 2nd best market last gen.

Of note Switch launched in China after 57 months. That means the extremely popular Switch was soley on the grey market for 57 months and only sold around 1-2m according to Rol. (IIRC)

Ps5 launched in China after ~7 months.

So to me this seems like either the Switch sold much more in China than Rol says, possibly in the magnitude of 5m+. Or the Ps5 sold much less on the grey market than you think.

Yeah this estimate makes no sense (but then, all explanations also don't make much sense lol) Sony mentioned that China was PS5's 5th or 6th biggest market vs Japan being the 3rd in terms of "active install base" or something along these lines. We also know from MediaCreate that PS5 software isn't doing all that well in South Korea and Taiwan (though I recall Taiwan having a much higher tie ratio compared to South Korea). A lot of consoles are being exported to Asian countries but I don't think they're close to half, let alone way over that.

Yeah this estimate makes no sense (but then, all explanations also don't make much sense lol) Sony mentioned that China was PS5's 5th or 6th biggest market vs Japan being the 3rd in terms of "active install base" or something along these lines. We also know from MediaCreate that PS5 software isn't doing all that well in South Korea and Taiwan (though I recall Taiwan having a much higher tie ratio compared to South Korea). A lot of consoles are being exported to Asian countries but I don't think they're close to half, let alone way over that.

Yes Sony did report countries ranked by "Active Consoles" and gave the spend per "active device" for China. Not shipments or sell-through and Japan was 3rd. So it would suggest the exporting situation isn't as extreme as some speculate. The report is specifically about China so the choice of using "Active Console" and "Active Device" rather than "Consoles Sold" is acknowledging the high number of imports in china relative to other countries however like I said, they still report Japan as the 3rd biggest country with this metric.

As of March 2022 Sony reported 670k sell-through in China showing the PS5 is selling plenty of Consoles directly in China and China was 6th in terms of Active Consoles with the average spend per Active Device at $223 in China and 295,700 PS+ subscriptions in China.