Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums banner

Playstation 4 approaching 50% market share

20K views 73 replies 14 participants last post by  MikeBear 
#1 ·
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/252...ldwide-less-than-1m-away-from-50-marketshare/

Sony's 8th generation home console, the PlayStation 4, has had a really strong holiday season and has had strong sales since it launched in November 2013. The console has set many records and is by far the fastest selling console this generation and only second in gaming history to the Wii.

The PlayStation 4 has now sold more than 17 million units worldwide, with sales of 17.35 million units. The milestone was achieved on the week ending December 13, 2014, where it sold 781,557 units.

The PlayStation 4 for the week sold more than the Xbox One and Wii U combined. Lifetime PlayStation 4 sales is also just 934,016 units away from equaling the combined lifetime sales of the Xbox One and Wii U.
 
#2 ·
Very impressive ,even with all the XBOX bundles, free games and price drop. With the 2015 lineup the gap will widen .Been having a blast playing "THE EVIL WITHIN" , very impressive game , and I just beat "LORDS OF THE FALLEN",another fun great game . Oh and DRIVECLUB had a rocky start but now updated its the most fun and graphical driving game I've played ,should be reviewed now, as it wasn't ready on release date.
 
#3 · (Edited)
I'll be interested to see what the sales numbers are come January for the simple reason boxing day I went with my buddy to buy an Xbox One, we went to 4 stores before we hit one that had an Xbox in stock, every store had an abundance of PS4's, could have been a supply thing though.
Sony still has to sell a million units without nintendo or MSFT selling a single console to hit 50%. Currently they are selling less than 50%, where a few months ago they accounted for over 60% of consoles sales week to week. While PS4 is still selling at impressive levels, market share wise, they have took a huge hit in the past 2 months.

Oh and DRIVECLUB had a rocky start but now updated its the most fun and graphical driving game I've played ,should be reviewed now, as it wasn't ready on release date.
Guess you haven't played Forza 5 or at least a half dozen other PC driving sims.
 
#6 ·
I own an Xbox One and am very happy with my purchase. I own a PS3 for the sole reason I am a huge baseball fan and The Show is a system seller for me. My question to everyone here is: Has Sony resolved the online gaming issues that seemed to plague the PS3? To me, PSN and it's online gameplay is nowhere near the same league as XBL. I know there are the Sony fanboys out there who will say that "online is free" with Playstation. But in my experience, it has been a situation of "you get what you pay for". I will likely be buying a PS4 when The Show 15 comes out but am curious as to what the general consensus is.

Thanks,
 
#9 ·
I can't really speak much as far as the PSN network, the vast majority of my gaming is single player. What little multiplayer I did play worked just fine but I'd hardly be considered an expert. I'd also caution taking what Steve says as verbatim. He's been beating the "PSN is crap" drum for years :)
 
#12 ·
Can you provide a side by side analysis of the 2 networks? I'm genuinely interested in hearing from someone who uses both where it is that PSN lacks the punch of XB Live. Does it have greater lag, disconnects often, shitty matchmatching, lack of features?
 
#13 ·
So, I only have a Xbox 360 and a PS3, but here are my impressions:

The biggest difference would be that Xbox Live is better integrated into Xbox games with a more consistent UI. On the Playstation side, it's as though each game developer had to "roll their own" with more of the PSN integration, which brought inconsistencies between one game and the next. Another example of consistency: on Xbox Live, all the players seem to have their voice communication setup properly, where on PSN, most players wouldn't have that - and unlike the PC (where you have a full size keyboard), if you don't have voice communication, communicating with your team is a real PITA.

I'm sure the PS4 has improved over the PS3 in this regard, since the PS3 was far behind the Xbox, but even the latest incident where both networks were suffering from a DDOS attack, the length of the PSN outage was longer. In addition, the Xbox live network hasn't had incidents where there was mass disclosure of customer information in the way that PSN has.

In short, I think Microsoft is better at this than Sony is. That could partly be because they've been doing it for longer.

Of course, I think both services are substantially worse than the options available to PC gamers, but when isn't that the case on consoles?
 
#15 ·
i will stick with xbone just because live is to me far superior than psn. it showed over christmas when LS took both services down but psn was down almost 3 days compared to the few hours for live.

i am also extremely happy with my xbone, just wish cod would use MS cloud service. might help out with the lag issues.
 
#18 ·
Vgchartz says 17.3 million. And further from 50% than it was the week before. The next year should be interesting with msft releasing some processing power and programming software to maximise hardware performance.
 
#20 ·
Any code updates are going to be minimal improvements at best unless they can release some fancy middleware that somehow automates the handling of the memory bottleneck they have.

The price just went back up to $399 as well. Can likely expect weak sales for a while. Also, let's not forget that Sony can pull the trigger on a price reduction any time they want. They said they were selling the PS4 at a profit when it launched. It's only gotten cheaper over time. They can probably drop it by $50 and still make a profit.

I still say this is a crucial time for MS. Sony is building momentum and are selling way more games than the XB1 (attach rate is meaningless if you don't have the install base). This is just going to bring more and more exclusives to the PS4 and make it very difficult for MS to secure exclusives unless they throw obscene amounts of money at deveopers. In 2015 the PS4 will get Bloodbourne (which looks friggin amazing), Uncharted 4, The Order 1886, No Man's Sky, The Tomorrow Children, Wild, Hellblade, Persona 5, Until Dawn, Street Fighter V. Those are ones I immediately recognize and am interested in, there a bunch more exclusives.

I still say what I've said for all of last generation. If FPS games are your 1 and only love and that's what you use your console for then the XB1 may edge out the PS4 (better network vs lower graphic fidelity), but if you enjoy RPG's, action games, adventure games, dungeon crawlers, indie titles, Fighting games, then the PS4 is a no brainer.
 
#22 ·
For no other reason than there are generally no alternatives. In this case it was Sony themselves who stated the 18.5M number.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...rstand-how-on-earth-sony-has-sold-18-5m-ps4s/

Funny thing is, much of the PS4's popularity is due to Microsoft absolutely mind numblingly sabotaging their own launch

Have to check in online every 24 hours, if you have no access to an internet connection get a 360 instead....I mean.....really?

Restrictive DRM which was spun horribly

Mandatory Kinect

$100 more expensive and less powerful

Pitched as a media center first, gaming console 2nd

http://bgr.com/2014/06/24/xbox-one-vs-ps4-2/

Sony had a Youtube video during E3 making fun of MS and their used game policy. This video was made by Sony executives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

Microsoft did a better job selling the PS4 than Sony did
 
#26 ·
I think I remember reading something about Xbox and PS4 selling a combined total of 50 million consoles by the end of the year. Maybe that is what is being referred too. Which was a huge jump on previous gens.

Either way, it's good for console gaming no matter what console you have. More consoles means more money invested into producing games.
 
#27 ·
It's quasi semi kinda sorta official. As per our only and unreliable source of data the PS4 has climbed past 50% market share and sits at 50.4% this week. With E3 approaching people are wondering if it's time for a price cut. Sony stated it was making money on the PS4 right from launch so there's certainly room for one but Sony doesn't have allot of financial bright spots right now and they may need to milk the higher price as long as possible.

Does Microsoft have any plans to claw back some of that marketshare? They've listened to the customer, lowered price, decoupled Kinect, changed their DRM strategy but none of it seems to be having much of an impact, only slowing Sony's momentum but not reversing it in any way.

Will be interesting to see who gains momentum from E3 this year. I think the E3 conference 2 years ago where the 2 consoles were revealed set the stage for today, Microsoft blew their conference to the point where Sony openly mocked them. Microsoft has been suffering from an image issue for the XB1 ever since.
 
#33 · (Edited)
I don't think Microsoft is as worried about market share as people think, if they were they would simply throw money at it with another price cut. I think their main concern at this point is the continues improvement of what they have now to prepare for next gen.

IMO Sony simply can't afford to throw money at the PS4 it needs to profit. The software development in comparison to xbox is incredibly lacking showing it's lack of direct profit investment. Plus it does keep selling. So who cares right, why make it better if people will buy anyway, sure in the end it might make for a lessor user experience but they are making money now.

My opinion is Microsoft has accepted defeat in some ways this gen, and will use it as a learning experience. Fortunately for Microsoft both consoles were released obsolete. With that said the attachment rate of this gen has been far greater than expected even with the overall lack of true next gen games. Showing that the market was ready for a new console for sometime. Which I believe will significantly reduce the time before we see a future gen. Something with HDMI 2.0 and a console that can handle 1080p 60 fps locked, because neither is really pulling it off. Except Xbox with its in house games.

I think Sony on the other hand needs to milk this console for everything it's worth, considering the rest of the company is not doing so well. PS TV has also taught them, simply slapping the playstation name on something doesn't make it an instant success.

E3 should be good for both consoles, Microsoft has promised a top notch game line up and I'm sure Sony isn't going in with its hands down. I think we will also see a bit of a shift if windows 10 takes off as predicted.
 
#29 ·
I personally have had little interest in any MS console due to their focus on FPS games. I'm not implying it's a bad choice because obviously FPS games are extremely popular, just not my thing. The closest I came to buying was with the 360, Mass Effect,Tales of Vesperia and Lost Odyssey ALMOST had me but it soon became clear that Japan was a lost cause for MS so they would stop focusing as many resources there and Mass Effect came out for PC.
 
#30 ·
Hardware features do not sell consoles , or really are that relevant when differentiating between consoles . Look no further that Kinect and all the silly TV features that XBONE has . Sony is still riding the wave of success that started back in 2013 , so they don't have much of a reason to panic that they don't have many exclusives this year . Sony maybe using a lot of It's first party studios to create games for VR stuff that I'm not really interested in . Guess we'll have to wait for E3 to find out !
Latest chart it just went over 50 percent http://www.vgchartz.com/
 
#31 ·
I agree that they are likely committing a fair amount of resources to Morpheus.

I'll say it again, give me Morpheus or Oculus Rift with Fallout 4 and it's a day 1 purchase for me. I want real games though, not little indie titles and crap like we saw for the Playstation Move.
 
#35 ·
That's what I mean Microsoft is worried about other things. More than market share. If you look at it as a product. If you sell 12 million anything you are happy. Especially 12 million something with a continuous $60 a year or $9 a month subscription to go with it for I imagine a healthy percentage of purchasers.
Microsoft is currently sitting on a massive network infrastructure most other companies can't come close too because of Xbox. Not to mention they recently figured out how to stream games using 80% less bandwidth than its competitors. Also mention of 360 compatibility. I think we are still in the infant stages of both systems with a lead into a future system. And much like the 360's continuous evolution even after the xbox one was released. I expect no different from the xbox one. Where it's competitor has removed features as time goes on.
 
#36 ·
I think the most compelling story that "living room devices" can have, is if they gain access to a "app store" style marketplace that has significant developer participation.

If Microsoft delivers universal apps to the Xbox One, then the product becomes interesting to me.

The PS4 was never interesting to me because, really, it's just a gaming system that is significantly slower than my gaming PC.
 
#38 ·
I agree, that is why I haven't bought a PS4 yet. It has nothing appealing to me. My Alpha has far better graphics, it'll play some games at 1080p 140 fps. I really like the new "Dirt" title, it's a rally car sim. Pretty cool and not forgiving in anyway, currently a PC exclusive. For good reason too, my i5 Alpha has trouble locking it at 1080p 60 fps. PS4 and Xbox have no chance. It'll be 30 fps for sure if it makes it's way to console.

Xbox has Apps which I use often, you don't really realize what it can do until you throw smartglass into the mix. You can search the guide, or your next youtube, nerdist etc. while what you are currently doing is on screen. Then jump to whatever instantly.

They say all apps for windows 10 will be good from phone to tablet to PC to 10 foot as well as xbox. They have also stated android app compatibility. They haven't specified Xbox, but if I can side load android apps on to my xbox one, there 100% will be an Xbox on every TV in my house, no question.

I honestly just don't see any appeal to the PS4 other than a couple of exclusive titles, given I have over 40 Xbox One games and literally, no joke thousands of games from the past 30 years on my Alpha. I don't have time to throw another console into the mix. At this point I'll probably pick up a Wii U over a PS4. It's exclusives are not the same as what you can get on PC, PS4 or Xbox.
 
#37 ·
I've always sworn Steve works for Microsoft but he keeps saying that's not the case. I guess market share is only important when you're in the lead? The PS4 and XB1 are primarily gaming consoles. When one competitor sells twice as many consoles as the other, it's a snowball effect, as a game developer, why would you want to pitch your product at an install base that's only 25% of the pie? I don't remember people jumping up and down talking about the long game when the 360 was leading the PS3.

I'm not sure a gaming console will ever be an integrated living room device. Not until everything is in the cloud at any rate and your TV powers it. Is Microsoft in a better position than Sony in that new world? Probably.....but guess what? You're now leaving the kiddie pool and heading out into the ocean with sharks like Google and Apple. The future also depends greatly on if VR takes off. VR, if popular may alone power another cycle of consoles. I'm really hoping Sony does Morpheus right. My fear is 2 things and these have always been monkeys on Sony's back, software and execution. Great ideas company, great hardware, mediocre software and sometimes poor execution which may or may not have something to do with the fact they are in decline and perhaps not throwing the necessary resources at projects.
 
#39 ·
Why do I work for Microsoft? Because IMO the PS4 has nothing to offer but a mediocre graphics, only slightly better than the Xbox. Where the Xbox One has an abundance of features I use daily. Not to mention a far superior online experience?

Sell me on a reason to buy a PS4 that doesn't include it's exclusives that are limited at best and DDR5. PS4 exclusives do not appeal to me, and PS4 graphics are just as bad as Xbox One, I'll take my Alpha or PC over it anyday. At least Microsoft will admit they can't handle 1080 60, I've seen far more screen tear and stutter on PS4 than Xbox.

I'm a gamer, I have literally thousands of games, and play for a minimum of 2 hours and as many as 24 hours every single day. I logged over 1000 hours on CoD MW2 while playing other games. Nobody can say I'm not a gamer.

Sony has done nothing to sell me, a GAMER on their system. They say their system is for gamers. Why because all it does is play games and claim it's the gamers system? Xbox plays the same games, they look just as good and can do far more.

I may be a gamer but I'm a tech geek as well, I buy every tech toy you can think of. My most used toy hands down is my Xbox One, because of what it can do beyond gaming.

Just cause more people buy it doesn't make it better. I have 3 of the highest rated TV's ever in my house. Built by a company that doesn't produce them anymore because lack of sales, more sales does not mean better, usually ever in this world.

The only reason I would buy a PS4 at this point would to be to play with friends, but my hardcore gamer friends, the guys that play daily are on Xbox.

And incase you missed it, the Xbox is already an integrated living room device. It does nearly everything you need it too.
 
  • Like
Reactions: boaddict
#40 ·
You're turning it around actually. I'm not implying you must work for MS because you don't want to buy a PS4, I'm saying that any negative comment/item of news lobbied at MS or the XB1 and you will spin it around in a positive light. (sales don't matter, MS only cares about the long game). That's some serious spin.

I own a PS4 because it has the games I like, I don't own a XB1 because it doesn't offer me anything I want. I am perfectly capable of critiquing Sony and their decisions and do so regularly. Like you, I too am a gamer and a tech lover. I've had a media server for 10 years, used SageTV for years, eventually moved to Roku+Plex. May move again if a compelling reason comes along. I don't see a console every becoming the centerpiece of the living room. That ship has sailed. It's now about software/middleware and big data. TV's are shipping with dual core processors. Dedicated media streaming hardware is dying a death and I don't think it's particular a slow one either.

Also, like you guys, I have a gaming PC more powerful than either console but some games are console exclusive or I simply prefer playing them on a console. Witcher 3 I bought for PC due to mods, Dragon Age Inquisition I bought for PS4 because the graphic quality was very similar and it used the frostbyte engine so little to no mods will be available.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top