It really didn't take rocket science to see that Sony won't reach 25M this fj. The lack of price cuts all over Europe made it very clear that Sony was aware they're not going to make it, so better not lose money on hardware. Last year's price increase from 499 to 549 also showed the difficulty of not losing money on hardware. fj report shows the margin is down to 6% which is extremely low. They have to make a lot more money this year to reason a price cut on hw.

For the same reason, all those XBox rumours started to show up (spiraling out of control). XBox also needs (a lot) nore income. I'd wager that Nutella has told XBox he is no longer willing to shovel billions down the hw pit every year. (XSeries cost a lot more than PS5s to produce and this holiday season saw dumping prices. My guess is MS lost well over half a billion alone on hw this holiday season).

Sony's low margins are shocking honestly. PS5 Pro is going to be expensive as fuck and it doesn't look like they are expecting it to drive hardware sales at all because they're forecasting a drop in hardware even with it coming presumably next fall. 

XBox is just done, they're going to do a loud song and dance from Phil and try to deny it, but the writing is on the wall. 

I've seen people point out the 77 million figure from Take-Two. That number is just estimates from IDG consulting and are not official. 

I know the regulars are aware Sony's figures are shipped and shipped does not equal sell-through. But we did get official sell-through data from Sony through March 2023 and the gap between shipped and sell-through was 2.4M as of March 2023. So if the gap remains the same that would put sell-through around 52.4M. And again the 77M figure are estimates.

Sell-through figures (page 7): https://sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/business_segment_meeting/pdf/2023/GNS.pdf

Shipped figures: https://sonyinteractive.com/en/our-company/business-data-sales/

Welfare who also tracks Xbox sales has Xbox Series X|S shipped estimates at 29.7M. That is compared to VGChartz estimates of 27.23M sell-through for a gap of around 2.5M.

Bungie's integration is a major factor as to why Sony has low margins at the moment. FY22 would be 2.3B in operating income without the cost of Bungie for example. 

As for hardware sales dropping YoY, it could mean no price cut at all, or a price cut to coincide with the release of the PS5 Pro (Oct/Nov). 

This year could be a bit tough for the PS5 since pent up demand is gone, games like GTA 6 aren't till 2025 and the price is clearly becoming an issue but all the recent inflation makes permanent price cuts very hard to implement. There's for sure gonna be a big shift in the coming decade with these ballooning budgets and increasingly long development times becoming unsustainable. With both consoles falling behind their last gen counterparts the long term prospects of the traditional console market aren't looking great right now but Playstation will be fine for a while still at least.

Sony SVP Naomi Matsuoka said, “Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle, as such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.”

PS5 is in its 4th year. Wow this generation seems to be going really fast. So PS5 should be the main console for another ~4 years. That's in line with the 2028 PS6 launch that has been circling around.

Sony also just declined their FY from 25M to 21M. Sony expects to reach the FY at 59.4M shipped. Meaning they want to ship 4.6M hardware units by the end of March 31, 2024. That's a -26.98% decline from Q4 from last FY. Not a good sign, but Q4 usually does sell the least units for all of the consoles. 

If Sony can reach 59.4M shipped then it will be and increase of +9.95% from the last FY. Which is amazing! 
Personally, I think Sony will set their FY '24/25 at 18M for a total of 77.4M shipped.

I long ago hit that stage, it's less an issue with Spiderman 2 which does exactly what it says on the tin, but more a need for you to hone into what specifically excites you about a game. Especially as you mature and have other interests you'd rather put time to. For me it's setting, tone & story primarily. If a game has that and a solid gameplay loop that I find satisfying, then it makes for a sound investment. Even then I have to move between different genres, If I play 3 action RPGS one after another, naturally they start to feel repetitive.

Spiderman is a bit too vanilla for me, I just started playing Miles Morales as part of the PS games catalogue and I had similar feelings to you. It's cute, nothing I need to come back to, put about an hour in, may or may not come back for more. Meanwhile I just completed FFXVI which was hella flawed. like way more than I saw any outlet talking about.... Yet a compelling lore, beautiful art direction & music, and the promise of incredible Fantasy setpeices made sure I pushed through to the end and saw all the different Eikon stories unravel. 

It was always pretty clear they wouldn't hit that target.
As I said before I'll believe it when I see it... and I'm clearly not seeing.
Great year, nonetheless.

Sounds like he's just trolling. Who plays a game for 15 minutes and judges it lol. 

I HIGHLY doubt they'll ship 4.6 million for Q4. I think it's going to be 3.5 million which would put their FY total at 19.9 million. I was one of the few back last year that predicted Sony wouldn't hit their 25 million target. I predicted 20-22 million. Now it looks like I might even miss that. Sony really overestimated the true demand for the PS5 once they got supply to meet demand.

For their next FY it's so hard to predict, but I'm going with 16 million shipped (unless they price cut the PS5, and a PS5 Pro won't help since I bet that will be $600), especially since 1) Sony said they wouldn't have any new entries to current franchises releasing this year. 2) They lost all marketing rights to Activision Blizzard games. COD marketing is huge and Sony won't have that anymore.