I'm more interested in those PS numbers; PS5 is lagging severely behind PS4 & PS2 in France. I know part of that is because of pandemic shortages, but their 2023 didn't see a surge in unit sales that I would've expected, it wasn't enough to make up for the missing sales of the pandemic years in France. I don't see PS5 2024 sales in France being large enough to help it catch up with PS4 & PS2 launch-aligned, either.
Which I guess correlates with what we know, that they are behind PS4 launch-aligned in Europe. They would need a massive surge in sales this year to have PS5 catch up with those two systems launch-aligned and I don't think that will happen.
Meanwhile, PS5 might be somewhat ahead of PS4 in the US but it's not by as large a gap as you'd think it could be given the collapse of Xbox sales and slowdown of Switch, suggesting to me that it's losing sales to other platforms like PC. The sales trend in Japan has slowed down significantly, stabilizing at ~ 18K weekly. So it may be ahead of PS4 for now over there, but I think within a couple years it'll be negligible or pacing behind PS4 in that region for lifetime sales unless there's a big uptick again.
Sony's best hope is that other European countries are picking up the slack and that some of them had much bigger 2023 numbers (to make up for shortages in the pandemic) to get them at least close to PS4 levels launch-aligned in those countries, because there isn't much to propel 2024 sales ahead in those places and in fact SIE already have issued guidance saying they expect sales this FY to be down over FY '23. So we know the PS5 Pro (if it launches this year) won't be a propellent to boost sales.
Definitely makes me wonder what lifetime PS5 sales will end up looking like. At this pace, I think ~ 105 - 110 million is a fair estimate. That's for a seven-year period; PS6 probably isn't coming until 2028 so the extra year could help PS5 lap PS4's total lifetime numbers. Even so, I guess the point is: it's going to be a lot closer than it should have been and I don't think the pandemic shortages can be 100% blamed for if/when PS5 tracks behind PS4 launch-aligned globally over the next few years.
At that point, I wonder if certain people will finally start acknowledging that perhaps other decisions 100% within SIE's control, could be to blame?
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