Leak PlayStation Plus Strategy - Full Presentation From April 2023 (69 Slides)

[Deleted member 223]

While I completely agree with your point about the number of subs vs price hike.

The PS4 is one of the best selling consoles of all time... This is not like it was close to be a failure.

They're growing the user base because of the backwards compatibility, those who have ps4s were not just left behind on all the new stuff the day the ps5 was released (a bit like when you upgrade your PC new games will still work for people with older machines and you get more performance on your new rig, while some new games will gradually not be playable on the old machines). This is in part how steam became this big.

What you're suggesting gets reflected in MAU. If the MAU is not doubling or significantly increasing you know the combined number of:

1. users leaving the ecosystem entirely
2. users transitioning to the PS5 from PS4
3. users new the ecosystem.

Is more or less balancing itself out from year to year.

Hec you can even be growing in MAU but still have your subs plateauing cause the online paywall artificial hook is not a hook that will get a Fornite, Warframe, Roblox, Warzone, Apex gamer on a budget trapped - unlike a traditional gamer of old that consumes traditional boxed titles..... and we know the share of this type of F2P gamer has seen a significant increase over the previous console cycle. Poetic justice I must say and a win I guess for Gen Z. This butfucks Microsoft as well in equal or worse measure - which is lovely to see. The shift is also favorable towards PC adoption. A lot of moving pieces, to which the obvious dimwits at SIE are trying to patch with tasteless, to put it mildly, short term solutions, and in some cases, solutions which are long term destructive and strategic mistakes.

There was significant PS Plus growth between the mid-to late cycle of the PS4 era to the early Covid PS5 era but Sony has clearly hit sub plateau, and MAU's are not increasing significantly when all of the factors above are taken into account.

A catch all solution to all the troubles is simple: sell more PS5's. A significantly higher boatload of units more than what Sony is currently selling, not just slightly above PS4 launch aligned. That still leaves the two tier system untouched. Fixing the two tier system is clearly something they're not willing to do but that is a trap of their own making. I've floated my ideas on that before. Bottomline the F2P model feasts on the incentive structure that currently exist which taxes traditional titles more, specially traditional MP/Online titles making F2P games even more accessibly attractive for consumers which in turn incentivizes devs to try F2P more - it's a closed loop - with the added benefit that for F2P games there is no cap on the maximum number of users available to be tapped.

That is to say, for F2P you get access to the full MAU addressable while for traditional boxed titles, specially traditional online titles the games are limited to PS Plus install base, which is less than half of current MAU. All of the sudden, something like say Fornite's popularity makes all the sense in the world. The market does work in mysterious ways. Both Sony and Microsoft with their sub policy incentivized this F2P GaaS shift, whether they want to admit to blame or not. Now Microsoft being the loony is expected, but no one forced Sony, the market leader and supposed adult in the room to follow MS - of course Sony simply saw a $ sign and rammed their heads on it (but Valve didn't). Now SIE execs tell you they need to get into "GaaS" as a "necessity" and obviously the loyal sheep are expected, even demanded in peer-pressure fashion to support it.

 

[On Demand]

PS5 stock issues is the reason PS5 was behind PS4 launch aligned. That’s not an excuse. That’s a fact.

PS5 passed PS4 awhile back in the U.S….It’s the global sales where they were behind up until December 9th when it was only 1 week behind. By now PS5 is ahead and 2024 will put it further ahead.

 

[Deleted member 223]

You said a lot nothing there.

Now as I typed in the previous post you can be considerate of the early stock issue predicament, partly due to the chip shortage, the z variable wrecking ball but it's still an excuse and I'll tell you why.

Did Sony and SIE prepared themselves for a heavy front-loaded console lifecycle that say, could support 150 million units sold within the span of 6 years, with the later years seeing the decline (in this case Year 5, and Year 6)? I don't think even with the chip shortage variable disappearing from the picture all together on launch day was Sony ready for that kind of demand to support that kind of lifetime sales within such a span of time - so something is wrong on their end.

If their supply chain is not ready, because their plans did not account for that possible type of demand, and what is required to satisfy that demand that says that they're doing their estimates wrong, they're reading the market wrong, they are overestimating the competition and their supply chain scalability, specially for early gen production, is not fit to size. Ergo, the excuse. In short there are tons of moving variables beyond just the chip shortage. All of that has to go into a pre-launch planning map of several years. I predicted Xbox would crater early this gen based on last gen performance and leadership direction and I'm an outsider - but the writing was on the wall. You gotta be ready to tap on that day 0 of launch day, and feast.

Again, you have a PS5 that launch aligned is barely above PS4 lifetime, with 3 years already under its belt, with Xbox sales cratering, significantly harder in numbers than the upward trend of the PS5 above the PS4, while PC is on a rise and the Switch 2 is coming next year. The window of opportunity to seriously tap on sales scalability was largely missed, covid, stock issues, or otherwise. Bottomline.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

@KnittedKnight So are you suggesting that Sony should've taken a F2P type model with their subscription service, then? I can see how that might have worked, although it'd require massive reworks of monetization policies and methodologies. It can definitely be argued that the idea of online play paywalled behind a subscription is outdated, and in a world where such is free on platforms like Steam, it puts the consoles at a disadvantage.

But how exactly would Sony be able to shift the PS+ model to something that's essentially "free" while still getting (and increasing) the revenue the service brings in currently? What becomes the big draw when online play is no longer a paid requirement?

IMO, as a quick thought the only solution would be to "microcomputerize" the console (and I specifically mean "microcomputerize", not "PC-fy", because that opens up a giant can of worms in terms of closed vs. open standards). Basically something I was suggesting Sony may look into doing many years from now. They create a range of system productivity suites that come with a subscription. Much more robust system-side streaming, video production, graphic design/editing, group chat etc. utilities that users can access with a regular subscription. But online play itself becomes free (again; remember, it was originally free on PS2 & PS3).

Come to think of it, some of the various features we know they are looking into via patents, could be rolled into such a subscription package.

The Game Pass-like model of Day 1 access clearly isn't the answer, otherwise Microsoft themselves wouldn't be ignoring it by doing special editions weeks ahead of the Game Pass drop for those who preorder ahead of time. And the services acting as a large backlog vault of older releases only goes so far, not to mention all the costs associated with licensing which might not be worth it at the end of the day. I'm looking at this from the POV of something that can provide Sony recurring revenue with high profit margins, to take the load off from GaaS/live-service titles needing to do such, and knowing console sales themselves are low in profit margins, and the budgets for the big AAA releases is only increasing.

 

[On Demand]

You said a lot nothing there.

Now as I typed in the previous post you can be considerate of the early stock issue predicament as an z variable wrecking ball but it's still an excuse and I'll tell you why.

Did Sony and SIE prepared themselves for a heavy front-loaded console lifecycle that say, could support 150 million units sold within the span of 6 years? I don't think even with the stock issues variable dissappearing they were ready for that, nor are ready for that kind of demand, and supply chain output. So if they're not ready, that says that they're doing their estimates wrong and their supply chain scalability, specially early gen, is not properly planned. Ergo, the excuse.

Again, you have a PS5, that launch aligned is barely above PS4 lifetime, with 3 years already under its belt, with Xbox sales cratering, significantly harder than the upward trend of the PS5, while PC is on a rise and the Switch 2 is coming next year. The window of opportunity to seriously tap on sales scalability was largely missed.

You have that opinion. But that’s all it is.

I don’t even understand what you are doubting. You do know PS5 had manufacturing problems yes? It would of pass the PS4 2 years ago otherwise. In fact PS5 actually was tracking ahead of the PS4 early on but then fell behind when the chip shortages got worse. I believe that started around the summer towards the end of 2021.

It’s not a coincidence once supply got better in the summer 2022 it started catching up and now over a year later matches PS4 sales. From here on PS5 is going to be ahead of PS4.

 

[Deleted member 223]

@KnittedKnight So are you suggesting that Sony should've taken a F2P type model with their subscription service, then? I can see how that might have worked, although it'd require massive reworks of monetization policies and methodologies. It can definitely be argued that the idea of online play paywalled behind a subscription is outdated, and in a world where such is free on platforms like Steam, it puts the consoles at a disadvantage.

F2P for a subscription rental service.... no lol. Absolutely not. No such thing.

I'm merely suggesting that gating online play behind a subscription paywall had an industry wide unintended consequence of incentivizing a shift towards more F2P GaaS game development, and an even greater disposition by consumers to consume the ever budget friendly and accessible F2P GaaS games, as opposed to a consumer dishing out a subscription cost of $60 + $60 for a traditional boxed title, now $80 + $70. I believe that was a market condition catalyst that helped create, in part, an avalanche effect, consequences of which we see now. All the snowball needed was the proper market conditions (created by Sony and MS), the title model - say Fornite BR and the ball got rolling with no stopping.

Executive summary is simple.

Sony should not have followed MS in gating online play behind the PlayStation Plus subscription service. What they gained in gratuitous subs and revenue for little input (coercing their base) is now being paid in the form of having to pivot to GaaS, making investments that may otherwise not have been necessary had F2P games not become so appealing and monetarily accessible to a new generation of gamers compared to traditional boxed sales. I think there is very strong correlation that this F2P GaaS explosion and shift started to take root in the market when the major platform holders decided to gate online play behind a paywall . Before Sony joined Microsoft in this gating process at the outset of gen 8 (PS4/Xbox One), F2P existed, with the same basic pull and qualities it has today but was never as popular a choice amongst gamer, or the leading choice as it's today. Something happened during gen 8 that had not happened previously which helped push it over the hump and helped in part create an avalanche effect. That something is obviously the artificial paywall gate for traditional online gaming. The market, that is consumers, and savvy developers (see Epic Games) naturally reacted in a way so as to find a escape from the tyranny of the paywall, which to Microsoft and Sony appeared as if it was a master stroke of infinite gratuitous money. F2P GaaS was the loophole - those games do not get a gate tax as a traditional online boxed title, and you can tap the full install base of the platform, as opposed to being gated to the much smaller, less than half, subscription base.

The market needed a good example to follow, a game that was addicting and of quality and Epic provided that with Fortnite, which was one of the key things that was lacking for F2P games generally speaking - quality - as devs were scared of taking a massive leap of faith, and most efforts were found on PC. Epic proved you could do it, with a working model. Once every other dev saw how it was working for Epic, and some other PC devs, all the big pubs wanted in, and thus the avalanche was in motion, unable to be stopped.... you got now the Apex, Warzone, PUBG, Genshins, Warframe etc etc etc, even Destiny had to pivot to F2P after being a traditional model title.

The more gamers consume F2P GaaS games as their sole source of gaming, the less likely Sony is going to be able to sell a sub of PlayStation Plus. The online paywall does not apply to those games, and the majority of the subs, as evidenced in this thread are first tier Essensials subs - that is, the consumers that are more likely to be under an underhanded coerced influence to sub to PS Plus because of the paywall, as opposed to simply by "choice". In essence, the master stroke to capture the full PS market and turn it into a milk factory is no master stroke. The market is split in two tiers, by Sony's own making, with F2P GaaS winning out.

I believe Sony's leadership understands this, I don't believe they're morons except when they took the decision to go this route by following MS. I also believe they have made the assessment that now that the market has shifted, that simply killing the online paywall will do nothing to rectify the industry shift and they'll simply lose out on a huge chuck of revenue by doing so. Thus Sony rather keep this two tier system despite the damage it has already caused to traditional boxed sales. I think it's clear Sony has also decided to jump on the F2P GaaS wagon, except just avoid the F2P part of the equation were possible in order to push PS Plus subs - see Helldivers II.

I completely disagree with that approach. I think the online paywall for PlayStation Plus should be dropped, and boxed titles and F2P GaaS should be on an even keel on the PlayStation platform. I think the long-term loss of gratuitous (coerced) revenue will be paid for by having to avoid completely shifting and chasing the GaaS golden goose (and all associated cost involved, including already canned projects, say Deviation's game, Factions, Destruction All-Stars etc and the many more failures in store), as well as ensuring that Sony's bread and butter, which are traditional boxed titles have a more robust future in a consumers palette as a product choice. Consumer conditioning is key - monkey see, monkey do. If Sony fully co-ops GaaS, the industry will simply move even harder to GaaS - it's a reinforcing mechanism. I think PS Plus has a place and a market niche to serve and it can be served perfectly fine without the online paywall hook, and Sony should let those chips fall where they may in terms of total consumer adoption. Unfortunately I don't think they will even entertain selling that pitch to Sony's CEO, much less deal with the investor fallout a big drop in PS Plus subscriptions may have on revenue.... although not reporting sub numbers on financials help their case to obfuscate - as it does to Microsoft.

I think Valve, the "little" private company showed a lot of restraint and a lot of forward thinking smarts by not following Sony and Microsoft by gating online play behind a subscription rental service. Despite.... despite enjoying near monopoly status as a storefront on PC. They deserve the silent props for that. Of course it's the ugly face of piracy that incentivizes online GaaS adoption on PC, as well as market trends but at least it's not Valve's policy wise tilting the scale. It's a forbidden fruit per say, highly tempting, and I'm sure the folks at Valve have thought about this deeply. In some ways others would opine they're suckers for leaving dough on the table.

 

[Deleted member 223]

You have that opinion. But that’s all it is.

I don’t even understand what you are doubting. You do know PS5 had manufacturing problems yes? It would of pass the PS4 2 years ago otherwise. In fact PS5 actually was tracking ahead of the PS4 early on but then fell behind when the chip shortages got worse. I believe that started around the summer towards the end of 2021.

It’s not a coincidence once supply got better in the summer 2022 it started catching up and now over a year later matches PS4 sales. From here on PS5 is going to be ahead of PS4.

I'm doubting with sound reason, specially when I see Sony beefing up a plant and expanding capacity, after the fact. Now you may not connect the dots and see all the moving pieces and how that ties to pre-planning, and what it takes but I do. I guess that's just an opinion too.

Keywords here: after the fact - aka reactionary, as opposed to pre-fact. Building scale after the fact. Any demand you miss in Year 1 or Year 2 will get satiated by the competition in plural, not just Xbox or Switch or PC but it could be a fancy new iPhone, or a bike etc catching that disposable income. You have to be there to meet the demand when it's there, at that specific date, at that specific time. That is to say, you're not going to be making up in Year 4, what you lost in Year 1 and Year 2 - that is gone, lost. You're going to sell in Year 4 what you more than likely were bound to sell in Year 4. You may get a small lag at best but that is just cause I hate absolutes in a topic that is not about absolutes, except the conclusion that their pre-planing and supply chain was not up to the task and thus a partial failure on their part - hence excuse. You merely focus on the chip shortage as sole source of the troubles - attributing that to an unforseen act of god, when that is not the sole reason, and even for that particular variable you can pre-plan, whether the variable rears its ugly head or not, at the very least to mitigate impact, as opposed to scrambling.

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

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

F2P for a subscription rental service.... no lol. Absolutely not. No such thing.

I'm merely suggesting and I've expanded on that in other topics so I hate to have to repeat myself every time the topic comes up cause it's all interconnected with this F2P GaaS revolution you're seeing now, as partly unintended consequences of gating online play behind a paywall.

Well I'm not necessarily caught up with everything you've posted on the topic across various other threads so you'll have to forgive me on that front.

That said, if the belief is gating online play behind a paywall is what has led towards slowing and stagnation of subscription service growth, then as a means of increasing MAU (assuming MAU increase wll lead to substantial revenue & profit increases as well) one "easy" option for Sony is to revert back to how they did things with the PS3. Where the online was free, while PS+ was a paid additional perk on top of it.

Doesn't really address the lost revenue from online subscribers no longer needing to pay for PS+ though, hence some of the things I suggested like future system features tied to a subscription as a perk, and "microcomputer-izing" system functionality for various gaming-related productivity components also tied to a subscription (critical system features and updates of course, should continue being free as they currently are).

You have that opinion. But that’s all it is.

I don’t even understand what you are doubting. You do know PS5 had manufacturing problems yes? It would of pass the PS4 2 years ago otherwise. In fact PS5 actually was tracking ahead of the PS4 early on but then fell behind when the chip shortages got worse. I believe that started around the summer towards the end of 2021.

It’s not a coincidence once supply got better in the summer 2022 it started catching up and now over a year later matches PS4 sales. From here on PS5 is going to be ahead of PS4.

IMO I think that comes with a few caveats. For example, they simply have to roll back on the PC ports for traditional titles. We not only now know that PC versions starting dev simultaneous to console is the reason for games coming later than expected (Wolverine, for example), but now just look at how easy it is for that stuff to get spoiled and damaged by the PC community when leaks like the awful ransomware attack on Insomniac occur. That community now has a PC build for Spiderman 2 cooking, they've already compiled a playable build of Wolverine...and that's the audience Sony have been wanting to bend over backwards to please with shorter release windows of traditional games or even Day 1 availability?

It just simply isn't worth it. Retain that value proposition for the console, and push the hell out of it. They honestly don't need PC for growth outside of some GaaS titles and maybe collections of older, legacy titles to the platform. IMO anything that is current-gen should only be focused on the PS5; leave PC out of the picture or at the very least, don't consider PC ports until 4-6 years after those games have been available for the console, and always make sure those teams have something new cooking for the console within 1-2 years of such ports.

There are other things Sony need to do in order to ensure PS5 stays well ahead of PS4, like potentially looking into a couple of notable 3P publisher acquisitions, studio acquisitions, and strengthening the amount of 3P exclusives (timed exclusives, "2P" exclusives) to the platform. Hopefully re-ignite things on the messaging front online (bring back Kevin Butler & co!), but that's more of a want, not a "need" per se (it would help massively in shutting down a lot of the pro-Xbox FUD that spreads and balance out seeing Phil Spencer plastered everywhere with media outlets, that's for sure).

 

[On Demand]

I'm doubting with sound reason, specially when I see Sony beefing up a plant, after the fact. Now you may not connect the dots and see all the moving pieces and how that ties to pre-planning, and what it takes but I do. I guess that's just an opinion too.

Keywords here: after the fact.

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

Yeah I don’t see the relevance of this. Sorry.

That actually helps my point than yours.

 

[Yurinka]

PS5 stock issues is the reason PS5 was behind PS4 launch aligned. That’s not an excuse. That’s a fact.

PS5 passed PS4 awhile back in the U.S….It’s the global sales where they were behind up until December 9th when it was only 1 week behind. By now PS5 is ahead and 2024 will put it further ahead.

Yes

 

[Yurinka]

Did Sony and SIE prepared themselves for a heavy front-loaded console lifecycle that say, could support 150 million units sold within the span of 6 years, with the later years seeing the decline (in this case Year 5, and Year 6)?

No, because this never happened in gaming history and is unrealistic. As a reference, PS2 achieved 150M in 2011 (11 years after release), and PS2 didn't have to face the lack of components issue.

Being supply constrained by this issue they obviously weren't going to sell twice faster than PS2. That doesn't make sense.

But did the prepare to -even if facing the supply constrain issue- to end selling at the end of the PS5 lifecycle at least somewhere between PS4 and PS2 numbers? Yes. With the comeback after they got enough components PS5 is again the fastest selling PS console ever in a worldwide scale.

I don't think even with the chip shortage variable disappearing from the picture at launch day they were ready for that kind of demand to support that kind of lifetime sales within such a short span of time so something is wrong on their end. If their supply chain is not ready, because their plans did not account for that possible type of demand, and what is required to satisfy that demand that says that they're doing their estimates wrong and their supply chain scalability, specially early gen, is not fit to size. Ergo, the excuse.

Chips shortage wasn't an excuse from Sony, it was a global issue that affected all the electronics related industries, including rival consoles or PC hardware.

Again, you have a PS5 that launch aligned is barely above PS4 lifetime, with 3 years already under its belt, with Xbox sales cratering, significantly harder than the upward trend of the PS5 above the PS4, while PC is on a rise and the Switch 2 is coming next year.

Launch aligned PS5 had a better start than the PS4 but got supply constrained, so during some time was under PS5 numbers. Once they solved the chips shortage issue they started a comeback that resulted on PS5 becoming again ahead of PS4 this month, and according to Sony they'll keep pushing shipments so the difference vs PS4 will continue increasing.

Sony said 30% of the PS5 purchasers aren't migrating from PS4, they are new users. Maybe from the Asian countries where they are growing, like China. Or who know,s maybe some are PC users who love their ports and want to play the rest of the Sony games. We also saw in the leaked Insomniac docs that there's still 70M of active PS4 users who still didn't migrate to PS5.

They have 50M PS5 sold + 70M PS4 active users who pretty likely will end migrating + a great 30% of new users. So pretty likely PS5 will end outselling the PS4 and the question is if it's going to ousell PS2 thanks to growing their brand in Asia, PC, mobile, tv shows + movies, etc.

I think that if most of these PS4 users migrate to PS5 if they keep a 30% of new users and they continue growing in Asia/PC/mobile/tv shows + movies as they are doing, they'll outsell the PS2 and will pass 160M. But not in 5-6 years, but in 11-12 years instead.

 

[Danja]

I don't see how they can outsell the PS2. Only system that can do that is the Switch and with the Switch 2 impending not sure how much that will affect tailwind sales.

Playstation systems aren't that price scalable anymore to really get it down to a price to sustain legacy sales after a new system.

 

[KiryuRealty]

No, because this never happened in gaming history and is unrealistic. As a reference, PS2 achieved 150M in 2011 (11 years after release), and PS2 didn't have to face the lack of components issue.

Being supply constrained by this issue they obviously weren't going to sell twice faster than PS2. That doesn't make sense.

But did the prepare to -even if facing the supply constrain issue- to end selling at the end of the PS5 lifecycle at least somewhere between PS4 and PS2 numbers? Yes. With the comeback after they got enough components PS5 is again the fastest selling PS console ever in a worldwide scale.


Chips shortage wasn't an excuse from Sony, it was a global issue that affected all the electronics related industries, including rival consoles or PC hardware.


Launch aligned PS5 had a better start than the PS4 but got supply constrained, so during some time was under PS5 numbers. Once they solved the chips shortage issue they started a comeback that resulted on PS5 becoming again ahead of PS4 this month, and according to Sony they'll keep pushing shipments so the difference vs PS4 will continue increasing.

Sony said 30% of the PS5 purchasers aren't migrating from PS4, they are new users. Maybe from the Asian countries where they are growing, like China. Or who know,s maybe some are PC users who love their ports and want to play the rest of the Sony games. We also saw in the leaked Insomniac docs that there's still 70M of active PS4 users who still didn't migrate to PS5.

They have 50M PS5 sold + 70M PS4 active users who pretty likely will end migrating + a great 30% of new users. So pretty likely PS5 will end outselling the PS4 and the question is if it's going to ousell PS2 thanks to growing their brand in Asia, PC, mobile, tv shows + movies, etc.

I think that if most of these PS4 users migrate to PS5 if they keep a 30% of new users and they continue growing in Asia/PC/mobile/tv shows + movies as they are doing, they'll outsell the PS2 and will pass 160M. But not in 5-6 years, but in 11-12 years instead.

You’re arguing with an idiot.

 

[Yurinka]

What you're suggesting gets reflected in MAU.

A lot of moving pieces, to which the obvious dimwits at SIE are trying to patch with tasteless, to put it mildly, short term solutions, and in some cases, solutions which are long term destructive and strategic mistakes.

There was significant PS Plus growth between the mid-to late cycle of the PS4 era to the early Covid PS5 era but Sony has clearly hit sub plateau, and MAU's are not increasing significantly when all of the factors above are taken into account.

The most important metric of a product or service isn't its MAU or amount of subbers, it's the revenue. In the PS5 era they did the spartacus overhaul merging Plus, Now and doing many other improvements. Its revenue highly increased since then because since launch (as we seen in a leaked slide) every month there are more Extra/Premium subbers. They have record revenue and every quarter they make more.

The goal with spartacus wasn't to increase the amount of subs, but instead to grow their ARPU/revenue. We saw in another leaked slide that they plan to grow it beyond console in the future and were evaluating different options: bringing cloud gaming to mobile and smart tvs, and offering dedicated content for PC or mobile and maybe teaming up with Disney+, Spotify or Crunchyroll to provide some potential synergies.

That is to say, for F2P you get access to the full MAU, for traditional boxed titles, specially traditional online titles the games are limited to PS Plus install base, less than half of current MAU. All of the sudden, something like say Fornite's popularity makes all the sense in the world.

Paid games GaaS may not be as popular as Fortnite, but from there Sony gets money from selling the game + the game sub, which is more money than the average Fortnite user has. Most F2P players, including the Fortnite players never pay or pay a little. So F2P games rely on achieving a super huge userbase and great user retention.

Paid games instead don't need that much.

I don't see how they can outsell the PS2. Only system that can do that is the Switch and with the Switch 2 impending not sure how much that will affect -tailwind sales.

Playstation systems aren't that price scalable anymore to really get it down to a price to sustain legacy sales after a new system.

• PS5 already has 50M units sold
• A few months ago there were 70M MAU on PS4 who still didn't migrate to PS5, most of them will sooner or later
• Around 30% of PS5 users are new PS users. So if let's say all remaining PS users who will migrate from PS3 or PS4 to PS5 are 70M, then there would be 30M new users
• With this you already have aprox 150M. Add here the new fans Sony are getting thanks to the tv shows, movies, PC, and in the near future mobile and the results from initiatives and deals to grow in China, Korea or India (and I assume in the future LATAM)

It's a best case scenario, but doable. Specially considering PS5 is now back to be the launch aligned fastest selling PS console ever.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I don't see how they can outsell the PS2. Only system that can do that is the Switch and with the Switch 2 impending not sure how much that will affect tailwind sales.

Playstation systems aren't that price scalable anymore to really get it down to a price to sustain legacy sales after a new system.

FWIW the PS4 is still selling; it's charting like some 2K average per week in Japan which is about 104K PS4 systems a year from that country. I imagine PS4 is still being sold in similarly low amounts in other markets across the world.

So maybe by the time PS6 launches, it'll be at ~ 122 million or something like that, which is a couple million higher than the last official numbers of 117.8 million (which IIRC was before the PS5 launched).

 

[Deleted member 223]

No, because this never happened in gaming history and is unrealistic. As a reference, PS2 achieved 150M in 2011 (11 years after release), and PS2 didn't have to face the lack of components issue.

Being supply constrained by this issue they obviously weren't going to sell twice faster than PS2. That doesn't make sense.

But did the prepare to -even if facing the supply constrain issue- to end selling at the end of the PS5 lifecycle at least somewhere between PS4 and PS2 numbers? Yes. With the comeback after they got enough components PS5 is again the fastest selling PS console ever in a worldwide scale.


Chips shortage wasn't an excuse from Sony, it was a global issue that affected all the electronics related industries, including rival consoles or PC hardware.


Launch aligned PS5 had a better start than the PS4 but got supply constrained, so during some time was under PS5 numbers. Once they solved the chips shortage issue they started a comeback that resulted on PS5 becoming again ahead of PS4 this month, and according to Sony they'll keep pushing shipments so the difference vs PS4 will continue increasing.

Sony said 30% of the PS5 purchasers aren't migrating from PS4, they are new users. Maybe from the Asian countries where they are growing, like China. Or who know,s maybe some are PC users who love their ports and want to play the rest of the Sony games. We also saw in the leaked Insomniac docs that there's still 70M of active PS4 users who still didn't migrate to PS5.

They have 50M PS5 sold + 70M PS4 active users who pretty likely will end migrating + a great 30% of new users. So pretty likely PS5 will end outselling the PS4 and the question is if it's going to ousell PS2 thanks to growing their brand in Asia, PC, mobile, tv shows + movies, etc.

I think that if most of these PS4 users migrate to PS5 if they keep a 30% of new users and they continue growing in Asia/PC/mobile/tv shows + movies as they are doing, they'll outsell the PS2 and will pass 160M. But not in 5-6 years, but in 11-12 years instead.

Unrealistic?

You have the Switch selling as of Sept 30th 132m units (in 6 years), and the biggest shopping season of this year, aka Year 6 is not factored into that number for a platform that was riding on the failure that was the Wii U.... as opposed to PS5 which was riding on the major success of the PS4, with a great exclusive launch line up, hardware and pricing model aka momentum™, on top of its main competitor riding on the massive failure of the Xbox One, on a steep brand decline and deterioration, with an inexistant launch line up and without doing much to improve the ecosystem (same controller, same U.I) as well as lacking strong assurances from the mother company..... and after all that you're going to tell me there is no precedent or the conditions being ripe for a major PlayStation 5 sales explosion - a heavily front-loaded explosion that takes into account MS losing out a great chunk of market-share, which we're seeing materialize now, but instead much earlier, and that the combined addressable between PS5 and Xbox is about 160 -170 million units, thus 150m being within that range?

And you're also going to tell me that Sony, doing factory expansions to massively increase production scale, after the fact aka after the PS5 launch is not reactionary planning to demand as opposed to proactive pre-launch planning that would take into account those market conditions, thus making the proper preparations and production investments before hand? You're going to tell folks that such demand could be not be anticipated, that such market conditions were not there, an illusion, no way, no how, no sir. You're going to tell me that in the planning process and that in the production equation you could not properly plan for a wrecking ball x variable such as chip shortages to at least have a contingency plan to mitigate its effects? Cause all these factory expansions after the fact tell me Sony underestimated demand beyond all reasonable expectations. I can be considerate of the chip shortage but that is not all there is to that story, it's not the magic wand and you have to be low IQ and blind to believe that - that is not the absolute end all of that discussion, simple as that. Chip shortage has turned into a fanboy buzzword talking point.

As for the wishful thinking that somehow PS5 is going to be doing massive numbers from here on out and perhaps reaching 150 mill.... not in a 6-7 year lifecycle. The current unit sales yearly average is already well below what the average should be for that very goal. Moreover we will see a steep decline and drop off by year 5, 6 and 7, at which point we'll get the PS6. Sony still got price drops to play with but clearly not as aggressive this gen, inflation also plays a role. This, despite Xbox dropping like a rock. The Switch 2, if successful will work against that as well. I could see 130m max at best - keyword, best. Unless of course they stretch the console lifecycle - which is not advisable, and opens up a can of worms. Never say never but....we're going on the low probables.

Here is the problem, cause I know for a fact you're not completely stupid, just partially, and highly dishonest. You're rushing to get one up on me, after I've shaken you around this forum. I get that, you got that fighting itch, and you think you got the IQ to do it - miscalculation. Just like that other dog with no IQ to speak of piggy backing of your post whose username starts with K, and that other clowning troll with the upvote whose username starts with F. I whipped those boys too as well. In that fighting rush you make critical mistakes trying to make your points exclusively contrarian to mine and thus you defeat yourself in the process, by your own doing - I merely articulate your fall. So don't cry afterwards. Don't know how many times I've to repeat myself with that. But here you are, again.

The most important metric of a product or service isn't its MAU or amount of subbers, it's the revenue. In the PS5 era they did the spartacus overhaul merging Plus, Now and doing many other improvements. Its revenue highly increased since then because since launch (as we seen in a leaked slide) every month there are more Extra/Premium subbers. They have record revenue and every quarter they make more.

Another perfect example of complete total idiocy and you defeating yourself in a rush. If I'm arguing about a subscriptions service, and more specifically, what could possibly improve total number of subs, MAU is indeed a strong metric to take into consideration when talking about the addressable market for said subscription service. Ergo, the larger or bigger the MAU, the greater the potential chance to sell a sub. If we're talking about a sub service plateauing, that is reaching a normal within a confined and finite base then the MAU metric is indeed important to provide us with a picture. Thus when discussing what potential strategy may be preferable to increase sub count - and as opined; the more consoles sold, the more MAU, the greater the likelihood a PS Plus sub is sold. Simple, nothing fancy.

Extracting more revenue per sub user (whether the total sub base is declining or staying stagnant) via price increases will only get Sony so far cause eventually the market will not support certain amounts of price increases - thus what Sony did to increase revenue by increasing price aka increasing return per user can only be iterated for so long before it no longer works, or worse, works against this purpose. The obvious, more permanent solution is to increase console unit sales by a significant number (not barely above PS4), thereby increasing MAU significantly and it then trickles to more PS Plus subs in natural fashion - all while keeping the price stable, competitive and attractive. What Sony is now trying to do is simply trying to test how much whales are willing to put with, and establish a new price normal while in the process make up for the millions of PS Plus sub users they've lost post-Covid correction, as well as the million of users that Sony is unable to tap because they're consuming F2P GaaS outside the online paywall hook of PS Plus (with Tier 1 Essensials being the overwhelming majority of subs).

MAU was also brought to that conversation to illustrate the F2P GaaS impact on PS Plus subs. MAU in this case provides the total addressable market picture with PS Plus subs being less than 50%, a fraction of that addressable. Thus, the > 50% userbase outside PS Plus is not hooked in large part because of the F2P GaaS revolution where consumers can still play games, high quality games without paying the online paywall tax. No better metric to create a picture for a conversation on that topic.

That's all to say you're talking rubbish, you're not addressing what I was talking about, in the context it was being talked about, merely throwing a strange strawman made up in your head which you thought was applicable as if I was going to fall for it - totally idiotic, because you keep bumping on the same rock, yet you keep trying. I'm not your average forumner but that won't stop you from trying I guess.

Paid games GaaS may not be as popular as Fortnite, but from there Sony gets money from selling the game + the game sub, which is more money than the average Fortnite user has. Most F2P players, including the Fortnite players never pay or pay a little. So F2P games rely on achieving a super huge userbase and great user retention.

Yes that is one of their goals with say something like Helldivers II. All of Sony's efforts so far pale in comparison to popular F2P GaaS titles - which is clearly their dream - and their sole GaaS hit was via an acquisition of Bungie with Destiny 2 (F2P shift built in - surprise surprise). And we all know Destiny 2 is being phased out. We can also talk about 3 failures already in the book, and I can think of more examples as well dating back to the First Person Shooter rush of gen- 7 which is similar in nature to this push but just wasn't called "GaaS" - anyway back to this gen: there is Destruction All Stars, Deviation's Game, Factions 2 .....and more corpses to come.

Finding the illusive hit is going to be costly, and it already has hurt Sony's bottomline. In my opinion, poetic justice. Non-F2P GaaS is merely a traditional online game of old with the gambling monetization scheme found in F2P GaaS, see Diablo IV for how that's usually going to turn out long term and how it looks. Instead of map packs, it's a battle/season-pass, with cosmetics etc, etc. Different hooks for dopamine exploitation.

----------------------------

I think if there is only one misunderstanding is between me and the user Demand. I think he's framing his posts solely around the chip shortage, when I look beyond it, and thus I don't find the chip shortage excuse all encompassing, and Sony's moves post PS5 launch to improve production scale give me a strong impression and belief the problem was much more complex than just chip shortage to include the full manufacture and production assembly process lacking scale to meet the demand - thus the correction (investments) occurring post launch. The simple problem with after the fact correction is that there is no making up for lost demand in Year 1 and Year 2 - that, as I already said, is done, kaput. Poor pre launch planning and poor read of market conditions, the state of the competition and product strength is to blame for that..... partially or however you want to posit it in your own head. And I think that is the most reasonable take. As opposed to the fanboy take of absolving everything at the chip shortage altar which has turned almost like a buzzword.

To put it differently, if Sony is making all these capital expansions for production to meet their Fiscal Year 3 projection of about 25 mill units and that is what is required to meet that demand on a comfortable basis then that should tell you that such production capacity, and scalability was not there for Year 1 or Year 2, regardless of the chip shortage. That is to say, Year 3 production capacity and scalability (those enabling investments) should have occurred before PS5's launch and been there for launch, at least investments very close in scale, from the very outset. Market conditions, the state of competition and the strength of the product before launch supported that estimation. At least it did to me, pre-launch and I'm an outsider. This is not a hindsight take, specially in how weak I viewed Microsoft's position with Xbox. I was rightfully expecting Sony to crush them early and Xbox to crater early, much earlier - and I'll use the term I used back then - a bloodbath. Things played out differently obviously. Will stand by my read on that however.

 

[Danja]

FWIW the PS4 is still selling; it's charting like some 2K average per week in Japan which is about 104K PS4 systems a year from that country. I imagine PS4 is still being sold in similarly low amounts in other markets across the world.

So maybe by the time PS6 launches, it'll be at ~ 122 million or something like that, which is a couple million higher than the last official numbers of 117.8 million (which IIRC was before the PS5 launched).

I think the most it can get to is maybe 119 since production has been scaled down outside of the extra million they produced during the heights of the PS5 shortage.

 

[Yurinka]

Unrealistic?

You have the Switch selling as of Sept 30th 132m units (in 6 years), and the biggest shopping season of this year, aka Year 6 is not factored into that number for a platform that was riding on the failure that was the Wii U....

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.

PS5 and Xbox is about 160 -170 million units, thus 150m being within that range?

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.

And you're also going to tell me that Sony, doing factory expansions to massively increase production scale, after the fact aka after the PS5 launch is not reactionary planning to demand as opposed to proactive pre-launch planning that would take into account those market conditions, thus making the proper preparations and production investments before hand?

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.

You're going to tell folks that such demand could be not be anticipated, that such market conditions were not there, an illusion, no way, no how, no sir. You're going to tell me that in the planning process and that in the production equation you could not properly plan for a wrecking ball x variable such as chip shortages to at least have a contingency plan to mitigate its effects?

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.

Cause all these factory expansions after the fact tell me Sony underestimated demand beyond all reasonable expectations. I can be considerate of the chip shortage but that is not all there is to that story, it's not the magic wand and you have to be low IQ and blind to believe that - that is not the absolute end all of that discussion, simple as that. Chip shortage has turned into a fanboy buzzword talking point.

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.

Moreover we will see a steep decline and drop off by year 5, 6 and 7, at which point we'll get the PS6.

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.

Sony still got price drops to play with but clearly not as aggressive this gen, inflation also plays a role.

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.

Here is the problem, cause I know for a fact you're not completely stupid, just partially, and highly dishonest. You're rushing to get one up on me, after I've shaken you around this forum. I get that, you got that fighting itch, and you think you got the IQ to do it - miscalculation. Just like that other dog with no IQ to speak of piggy backing of your post whose username starts with K, and that other clowning troll with the upvote whose username starts with F. I whipped those boys too as well. In that fighting rush you make critical mistakes trying to make your points exclusively contrarian to mine and thus you defeat yourself in the process, by your own doing - I merely articulate your fall. So don't cry afterwards. Don't know how many times I've to repeat myself with that. But here you are, again.Another perfect example of complete total idiocy and you defeating yourself in a rush. If I'm arguing about a subscriptions service, and more specifically, what could possibly improve total number of subs, MAU is indeed a strong metric to take into consideration when talking about the addressable market for said subscription service. Ergo, the larger or bigger the MAU, the greater the potential chance to sell a sub. If we're talking about a sub service plateauing, that is reaching a normal within a confined and finite base then the MAU metric is indeed important to provide us with a picture. Thus when discussing what potential strategy may be preferable to increase sub count - and as opined; the more consoles sold, the more MAU, the greater the likelihood a PS Plus sub is sold. Simple, nothing fancy.

Bullshit, you can't debunk my points with facts as I'm doing with yours, so now your trying to attack me personally, that's all.

 

[Deleted member 223]

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.

 

[Yurinka]

You said there was no precedent, in emphatic fashion. 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.

No, you didn't give any precedent and doesn't exist. You were asking for PS5 to sell 150M in 5-6M years and no console ever achieved this. As I shown for PS2 took 11 years and Switch -which has the portables monopoly, so isn't the same home console context- is at 132M six years and a half after release.

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 interpetration of what took place, sheltering on the safe “chip shortage” 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.

Now 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 it 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 to increase production capacity and scale, and why that is indicative of Sony, despite the chip shortage, of underestimating demand significantly and why that is a failure in pre-planing and estimation on their part (a production and scalability readiness problem).

But even your favorite suit says it himself, 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/

There was a chips shortages that affected most high end tech industries, including the PS manufacturing and shipments. We know that if they didn't sell way more was because they weren't able to manufacture and ship more. The demand was there because the shipped units got sold out super quickly until they solved the chips issue.

This is not a narrative, it's a fact. If you can't handle reality or don't like it it's your issue, not mine.

Jim says there "And now in terms of my executive bandwidth I’m spending a lot more time on trying to increase supply to meet that demand." "We might have had a few more to sell, but not very many: the guys on the production/manufacturing side have worked miracles.". He said that in the context of the console being sold out worldwide. The demand was there and had a record launch but they weren't able to ship more due to the supply issues, and after the launch window campaign stock was sold they weren't able to ship at "better than PS4" levels until now that they solved the chips issue and made the comeback.

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 anedocte 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.

Bullshit, if you don't have chips to make more consoles you can't ship them, period. No "better planning" or "better estimation" can fix it.

That reference to "leadership competence" is particularly nonsensical. What do you expected them to do? To go themselves to the mines to extract materials and to the factories to build the chips when the normal workers couldn't produce chips because there was a global pandemic affecting their country? To have superpowers to predict global pandemics and to create chips themselves with magic powers?

To add more nonsensical stuff you mention "money lost" when SIE has been more profitable than ever and "production innefficiency" acting as if even in the middle of a pandemic they didn't achieve record numbers and once they had access to enough chips again they weren't back to record sales numbers.

Like the other affected tech companies, once they were impacted by the issue they tried to find other suppliers, but couldn't until the components were available again in enough quantity. Once they were available again Sony diversified more their list of manufacturers to reduce the chances of getting the same issue again, and a new console revision was started to be produced that was able to use components from a wider range of providers.

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 toe 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.

Yes, Sony said it countless times, like MS or many other high end tech manufacturers: their shipments got severely affected by components/chips shortages. They didn't have any production issue -as Bloomberg lied some time before-, what they had was a components/chips supply issue due to the pandemic.

Once the chips shortage was fixed Sony was able to skyrocket production and this is why they did the comeback they are doing in recent months. Things that they explained several months ahead, and even predicted when PS5 was going to be ahead of PS4 launch aligned again.

But hey, feel free to continue ignoring reality.

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 conclusion: demand that was 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 fortunate your narratives shows either ignorance or willful dishonesty for arguments sake (aka selectivity, omission etc).

Even if Sony weren't able to produce as much as they wanted due to chips shortages, during that period they managed to increase their market share vs their direct competitor (as seen in country/region sales number where available, plus in some ABK acquisition court docs), who was also affected by the shortages.

We also saw their console selling out in minutes and people paying crazy numbers for them. Once they solved the component shortages, their sales highly incresaed with crazy YoY numbers in some of the top countries. So if any demand was lost was a tiny portion, something residual.

And in MS's case the demand decreased (or at least didn't have the super quick sold outs we saw with PS5 and didn't have YoY huge increasements in 2022 as Sony did, in fact in many places decreased) I assume due to lack of great exclusives and all their games being day one on PC and in a game sub. Once Sony solved the chips issue has been able to ramp up production and are selling a ton, finally matching the demand and passing the PS4 again.

A lot of nothing, you're not contesting those numbers because they're accurate. You literally restated the pattern built over generations. In essence you're merely trying to pivot again with your narrative by typing stuff.

You said "PS5 and Xbox is about 160 -170 million units, thus 150m being within that range?", I shared the known factual combined PS and Xbox numbers we have across the different generations to have a more complete picture. My opinion and estimate are from there and other factual data like the 30% of new users and 70M MAU still in PS4.

If you don't like facts it's your issue, not mine.

If anything and what is funny is your false premise: "we don't know the overlap"

Bullshit. We don't know the overlap in PS2, PS3, PS4 and PS5 generations because such information doesn't exist other than a handful isolated 3P surveys and estimations made in decades, and normally being region specific. If you have some proper source to back any overlap number show it, becase if not it's just a take out of your ass.

But of course 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 on a topic like this, despite the evidence available somehow it becomes a contested topic. And usually the main motive is to shield the billion dollar corp from criticism by sticking to a simpleton narrative.

- you were so dismissive of MAU but this metric in this case, does at least help you with a picture on that, despite being technically speaking flawed, but it's something to work with as opposed to working with nothing. Again, your IQ buckling under stress.

I am not dismissive with MAU, MAU are just that: Monthly Active Users (connected to internet during that month or later, so they could be tracked).

You should learn to be respecftul with people who disagrees with you, specially those who like me debunk your takes with facts. When you try to counter facts with insults and personal attacks sound pathetic, the debate ends and you may end getting a warning or ban if mods to their job properly. Goodbye.