Switch had the monopoly of the portables and merged the portables and home consoles business of Nintendo. So Switch rided on WiiU+3DS+Vita market (and in the previous gen Wii+DS+PSP market).
And unlike PS4 and PS5, its sales weren't heavily affected by the chips shortarges. In fact it had its peak year while the other ones were supply constrained.
Now it's on the sunseting stage of the console cycles, with every year selling less than the previous one and about to be replaced next year by its successor, so its sales will drop way more. And even if indirectly -they are now a niche, too expensive and complex for the mainstream casual handheld player- PC handhelds will compete against its successor.
Something I didn't take into consideration regarding the PS5 rough sales estimate is the potential future collapse of Xbox hardware. Because I think that even if MS ends going full 3rd party in consoles and abandon their console hardware, I think they'll do it at the end of the generation and after they released their game appstore for mobile.
You said there was no precedent, in emphatic fashion. Dismissing it outright as outrageous loony talk. I provided you precedent. I also gave the readers the market conditions and overall picture going into the PS5 launch. That picture and those market conditions in my view supported a PS5 sales explosion that could propel PS5 to those kinds of sales numbers within such time frame or there about.
You don’t have to concede the point by self-admittance – which you won’t do. That doesn’t mean you didn’t lose it and you’re now trying to pivot with your own read and interpretation of what took place, sheltering on the safe “chip shortage" absolute narrative like a dimwit and dishonest person not interested in nuance would – merely behaving as someone more interested in winning the argument by exhaustion against some forum foe you have a grudge with.
I’ve written my view on why the chip shortage is not the end all and encompassing excuse as to why demand was not fully and properly met, despite having the nuance to admit the chip shortage was a major factor, just not all of the factors. I explained why using those articles about Sony doing capital investments in production plants post-fact (post PS5 launch demand) to increase production capacity and scale and why that was indicative of Sony having production issues beyond the chip shortage, due to underestimating demand significantly. Ergo why that is a failure in pre-planing and estimation on their part as well as a production and scalability readiness problem.
But even your favorite suit says it himself, if in the absence and failure to connect the dots through critical thinking doesn't work on low IQ idiots that refuse to yield. You only need, obviously, an honest bone in your body, as well as the capacity to understand what is being said - unfortunately you do not, and I'm sure you're well aware of this article:
https://www.gamesradar.com/jim-ryan-on-ps5-stock-absolutely-everything-is-sold/
"Everything is sold. Absolutely everything is sold," Ryan said. "And everything will be sold in Russia (way to go by killing operations there), there’s no doubt about that. I’ve spent much of the last year trying to be sure that we can generate enough demand for the product. And now in terms of my executive bandwidth I’m spending a lot more time on trying to increase supply to meet that demand."
The console has seen stock shortages ever since it hit the market earlier this month, which Ryan said is largely due to strong demand rather than any production issues that stemmed from the pandemic: "We might have had a few more to sell, but not very many: the guys on the production/manufacturing side have worked miracles."
Ryan said he "wouldn’t plan on doing another big console launch in the midst of a global pandemic." While it didn't end up affecting the bottom line of console availability all that much, he said it was challenging. The company even had to do the prep for manufacturing by remote camera. Cue mental images of an engineer in China holding a circuit board up to a webcam and engineers in America and Japan squinting at the picture on their Zoom call.
Perfect anecdote of a production operation that was not ready for the eventualities faced, nor the demand. Better planning, and better estimation helps mitigate that immensely, and some companies do it much better than others (due to leadership competence, in large part). The anecdote here serves just as much as a laugh inducer as it does to showcase money lost - because that it what it ultimately translates to - production inefficiency.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147157065/sony-playstation-5-shortage-over
"We truly appreciate the support and the patience of the PlayStation community as we managed
unprecedented demand amid global challenges over the past two years," Ryan said.
However, as of Thursday at noon, PlayStation 5 consoles are
still out of stock at
BestBuy and most
GameStop stores.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/sony-says-it-plans-ps5-ramp-up-shortages-ease-2022-05-26/
Beyond the initial ramp up "we're planning for heavy further increases in console production, taking us to production levels that we've never achieved before," Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan told an investor briefing.
Why d you need heavy further increases in console production (via plant expansions etc) if all that you're missing to meet and satisfy demand is the missing "chip"? According to the narrative of course? Unless you use your brain to connect the dots and see that it's simply because demand outstrips supply, even with the chip shortage variable "solved".
Now you tie that picture to the capital expansions in manufacturing plants, and an ever increasing number of deals with suppliers to keep the whole operation and production of PS5’s stable and that showcases why Sony wasn’t simply ready before PS5’s launch to meet the demand of its product with a supply chain in tip top shape. If only the chip shortage was the issue, you wouldn’t have what it’s described, because there would be no need to – as soon as chips come, everything is in place to meet demand. That clearly wasn’t the case. Which again goes back to poor pre-planning and poor estimations on their part. And you can even have serious arguments about chip supply sourcing, and failure of having redundancies there or what could have been done to create redundancies etc - and that is a legitimate topic, obviously requiring more first-hand knowledge of the situation.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7361...aystation-console-every-30-seconds/index.html
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Me...s-record-PS5-production-and-chip-output-boost
Taking all of that into account we draw the following basic conclusion: Demand that is not satisfied at the time it exists is demand that is more than likely forever lost. And that "lost demand" was more than likely satisfied first by direct competitors (Xbox, Switch, PC) and then by indirect competitors, from an iPhone all the way to a bicycle. If you have any business IQ, or studied business in any shape or form you would understand the basics of this. Showing the lack of understanding of that by the way you formulate your narratives shows either ignorance or willful dishonesty for arguments sake (aka selectivity, omission etc).
This is basic stuff, basic. But of course this becomes a contested topic when dealing with low IQ idiots, and folks who are largely misinformed and running on fanboy narratives, displaying no critical self-thinking to speak of despite the evidence available. And usually the main motive is the basic urge to shield the billion dollar corp from criticism by sticking to a simpleton narrative - the fanboy syndrome.
Swing and miss.
We don't know the player overlap of each generation, but combined sales were:
PS2+XB = over 180M
PS3+360 = over 172M
PS4+XBO = over 176M (PS4 still selling a bit, but they don't report its sales)
Xbox Series alredy sold over 21M as of June and will continue selling more, so to reach 150M PS5 would need to grow its userbase but it's doable.
But to sell 150M after its over 10 year lifecyle, pretty likely 11 or 12 years. Not in 5 years because no console sold 150M in 5-6 years and wasn't even close.
A lot of nothing, you're not contesting those numbers because they're accurate. You literally restated the pattern built over generations. We do know for a fact that between direct competitors the overlap, while never 1:1 is insanely high vs. every other type of competitor/product, specially the way PS and Xbox have positioned themselves - as zero sum competitors. In essence you're merely trying to pivot again with your narrative by typing stuff. False premise: "we don't know the overlap"...
We do know that the two products share a total combined addressable for 170 million or so consumers - established pattern over 2 generations. It can be easily pictured as to how Sony could get to 150m by eating MS's lunch with a superior product - which they have. Sony's PS4 eating away at Xbox's 360 market share from previous gen illustrates this - because the total addressable from gen to gen hardly moves that much beyond 170 million on average. Ergo the market-share split of the PS3-360 generation to the PS4/Xbox One generation changed despite the total addressable average remaining the same (more or less). Again... what is even the point of arguing that at all...just sftu and move on to the next.
During a period of time Sony wasn't able to produce as much as PS4 and PS5 as they wanted due to chip shortages. Now the issue has been solved they have been able to produce the ones they needed and they have been catching up to the point that during this quarter, as they planned like a year or so before, PS5 is back again to be their fastest selling console ever, passing the PS5.
Now you're just tripping yourself and it's starting to become sad. You're fighting logic with logical fallacies. Like I told you, you think you have the IQ for that fight, but you don't, "you ain't got it" meme....and you walk into self-made traps. Of course you don't listen to what I type cause you think I'm hating on you, I'm just trying to help you out as someone analyzing your modus operandi over a long period of time. Of course you're helpless to self control it.
"Sony wasn't able to produce but the plant expansions are because of chip shortages." "catching up"
You don't expand production and make capital investments due to a chip shortage, you do so to increase production capacity and scale to meet demand.
"Problems" what problems? I thought there was no problem except the chip shortage?
To end it with some marketing triumphalism as if part of Sony's marketing team to get some fellow fanboy sympathy aka a dog whisle. Just sad, sad....
They didn't underestimate the demand, there was a pandemic that blocked them to have enough chips to make more consoles. Once they were able to produce enough consoles again they are shipping a lot of them to feed the delayed demand and aim to ship 25M units this FY, a target that seems they won't achieve.
What can I say, it looks like a broken record at this point, and sad. Contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, with a pivot to something else as usual.
It's hitting him right in the face and he fails to acknowledge it.
If you don't have chips to manufacture consoles you can't manufacture consoles, period. Sony, MS, the PC GPU manufacturers, the automobile industry etc. Almost high end electronics industry suffered it. Some like Sony solved it, other ones are still suffering it. You can't build consoles out of magic, you need chips to build them.
The couldn't anticipate the covid lockdowns and chips shortages, and couldn't do anyhing until chips were available again. Once chips were available again, they diversified their list of chips suppliers to reduce the risk of suffering the same issue in the future.
You solving something means there was a solution to it. The question is was the need for the problem itself to materialize a requirement for the solution or should the "solution" have happened without the problem materializing. You're interjecting yourself by trying to simplify the "problem" into a cohesive narrative that you prefer.
"they diversified their chip suppliers"... you mean to tell me they couldn't have done that with better pre-planning, preperation and estimation of the type of demand their product was going to have and that only... only after the cluster fuck occurred were they able to do so. Post-fact appraisal, and that nothing, nothing, in the absolute was their fault. Jaysus....
You're trying to weave a narrative very poorly. At the very least you're trying to add some depth despite the premise being flawed. The problem with that is the moment you decide to add depth, it starts to fall apart due to contradictions.
GaaS and services like PS+, Netflix and similar or an expanded window for crossgen games allowed PS4 still have 70M MAU.
GaaS market will continue growing, this time with Sony making many of them, PS+ will continue improving, Netflix and similar will continue there, PS6 very likely will continue using the same architecture so will be BC and sharing a similar hardware and the next gen only engines won't start taking full advantage of the PS5 hardare until soon after the PS6 release (because there are the most important differences since the jump from 2D to 3D and because AAA now require a lot of time), plus Sony is growing in big markets like Asia, and supposedly there won't be chips shortages again, meaning the PS5 tail will be stronger than ever.
Not even sure what this was addressing, definitely not what it was quoted under. Lol.
Is the point that there won't be significant sales decline in the tail end of a console's life-cycle or that the decline will exist but will be less pronounced (relative to previous gens)?
That reads as if you're not expecting a significant decline due to predicted (by self) increased demand in markets like Asia carrying the slack of market exhaustion in the EU/NA markets and somehow balancing the whole equation out. Obviously a prediction with nothing to back it up....except "more Asian sales".
You can make a bet on emerging markets, and I'm all for it, they're the future, in large part but you most definitely will see some decline, and the gen will get clipped for the PS6.
There are no price cuts available because over time this generation the costs didn't decrease, but instead increased. Not only because of inflation, but also because of component prices, shipment prices, development prices etc.
Instead of price cuts they had to increase the price of the console.
There will be price cuts, the matter is when not if.
As for the last, like I said, no crying.
