All purpose Sales and Sales Rumors and Anecdotes [2017 Edition]

[Rangers]

Seems like 199 PS4 is widely sold out online. Could hurt them if Sony didn't ship enough. Or alternatively could be good if they shipped a lot and still sold out I guess.

Xbox X seems available everywhere...

Saw my first Xbox X deal yesterday on ebay, Xbox X+COD WW2+Battlefront 2 for 549. I'm sure there's been others just the first I ever noticed.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/11/four_years_after_launch_ps4_is_selling_out_again

 

[JPT]

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/11/four_years_after_launch_ps4_is_selling_out_again

Looks like somebody did the same research as people on here and wrote an article about it. Or maybe they just lifted it from here

 

[DieH@rd]

PS4s selling out is a surprise to me, but the $199 deal was active several days before BF itself.

 

[DrJay24]

Didn't Sony do this last year? They had a good bundle but they undershipped it and lost the month.

 

[goonergaz]

Didn't Sony do this last year? They had a good bundle but they undershipped it and lost the month.

Sony won last year stopping a run of 4 (IIRC) months of MS on top

 

[BRiT]

Sony won last year stopping a run of 4 (IIRC) months of MS on top

No direct thread on November 2016 NPD but here's a post in December talking about November.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...by-revenue-hardware-now-software-later.59850/

If we assume the prior four months were exact numbers. Nov was 1.1 PS4 and 1.0 XBO. Lets take worst case rounding, that actual Nov results were XBO 1.04 and PS4 1.06.

 

[MrFox]

I don't understand the point of separating the months as winning/loosing. Sales are worldwide and cumulative. Trends are more a yearly thing than monthly because the sales pattern is different between xbox and playstation.

I think most of MS strategy since the xb1x unveiling has been to solidify their existing user base, putting their foot on the ground. BC is for their existing fans who had a 360. Xb1x is for upgraders. Xbox gamers are happy and convince friend/family to buy an xb1 instead of a ps4 (and a lot of posters are saying they are giving their old xb1 and "old" xb1s to a family member). MS stock allocation need to be primarily focused on US and UK, because those are the only territories which they can solidify. The US always have extremely strong holiday sales, and MS is launching their mid-gen, so they needed all their stock there.

Sony is in a different situation. They are balancing a very large number of countries so allocation tends to be less stable in the US each year. Considering they significantly outsold xb1 in the US since the beginning of the year (much more than any previous years) it can explain why the channels were depleted by the 199 sale.

They will probably sell more units in 2017 than any previous year this gen. If we look at worldwide yearly sales, they are probably on track to keep their 2:1 advantage indefinitely this gen. It could have been a little more than that if they had more stock in the channels for the 199 sale, but they might have multiple restocking for december.

 

[BRiT]

I don't understand the point of separating the months as winning/loosing. Sales are worldwide and cumulative.

Especially when November NPD 2017 will NOT include Cyber Monday sales, from what I recall.

However ... The reason why the months are separated and isolated by regions is because that's generally the only data readily available to us.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think most of MS strategy since the xb1x unveiling has been to solidify their existing user base, putting their foot on the ground. BC is for their existing fans who had a 360. Xb1x is for upgraders. Xbox gamers are happy and convince friend/family to buy an xb1 instead of a ps4 (and a lot of posters are saying they are giving their old xb1 and "old" xb1s to a family member).

It also brings back users who used to game on Xbox/X360 but switched to PS4 because they were disgusted by how MS handled the XBO launch. Even up to XBO-X I saw many former users of the X360 say they didn't see the point of the XBO-X, but have since switched back to primarily playing multiplats on the Xbox platform now instead of the PlayStation platform. Now some of them game on PS4(-P) only when it's an exclusive.

I think XBO-X was targeted not only at maintaining their current user base but equally to expand on it slightly by getting people who had switched to the PlayStation platform to come back and spend money on the Xbox platform. BC, upgraded BC titles, and technically superior (even if the differences would be difficult to tell without a side by side comparison) multiplatform titles all help accomplish both of those goals.

Regards,
SB

 

[djskribbles]

199 is the magic number. Didn't PS2 really take off once it hit that price?

I once thought PS4 wouldn't be able to reach PS2 numbers, and I still don't think that it can, but it might come closer than I thought. I didn't think any console would have a chance coming anywhere close to PS2 before this gen started.

Their 2018 software lineup looks at least as strong as 2017. With a $50 price drop and another $199 BF but with bundled game (RDR possibly) they could have an even stronger year of sales. Then permanently drop it to $199 shortly before PS5.

 

[DieH@rd]

199 is the magic number. Didn't PS2 really take off once it hit that price?

Well, that happened not far from its launch [at $299]. I think it dropped to $200 in 2002, and to $150 in 2004. By the end, it was sub $100 and incredibly small. PS4 will never be able to be downsized that much, even without HDD, without BD drive and with 7nm APU.

I once thought PS4 wouldn't be able to reach PS2 numbers, and I still don't think that it can,

It can neither reach PS2 numbers, pricepoint, or utter domination of market [multiplats were rare, almost everyone created PS2 exclusives by default]. But nobody really expected that.

PS4 will beat PS3, and then it remains to be seen when it will beat PS1.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS4 will never be able to be downsized that much, even without HDD, without BD drive and with 7nm APU.

Why not? Is a top-loading BD drive impossible?

 

[DieH@rd]

I'm saying [in relation to pricing of PS2] volume-wize and hardware-wize, PS4 will always have to remain larger and more pricier than PS2.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why can't it be downsized that much?

 

[DieH@rd]

For start, the entire mobo of superslim PS2 is of the size of a CD case.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That doesn't answer the question. Why can't a PS4 ever be shrunk that small? Doing some research, I see all the PS2 major components were shrunk to a single chip, so that's definitely something special. However, I'd like to see some compelling evidence that PS4 can't be turned into something very petite. Current PS4 slim is about the same size as the original PS2. 4 years later, PS2 was reduced to SP2 Slim. So how small can a PS4 Superslim become in ~2020?

 

[Entropy]

Optical disk, hard drive, electronics that may pull some 50W or so at 7nm given that memory will scale worse than logic, so toss in the necessary cooling for the above that is functional in cabinets.

 

[BRiT]

There are a few options if all you want is to make the main part as small as possible. Sure it might not be cheaper, but if all you're going for is base size ...

Replace the physical hard drive with flash storage.
Make the physical hard drive be external via USB/eSata.​

Make the Optical Disc be external via USB/eSata.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That doesn't answer the question. Why can't a PS4 ever be shrunk that small? Doing some research, I see all the PS2 major components were shrunk to a single chip, so that's definitely something special. However, I'd like to see some compelling evidence that PS4 can't be turned into something very petite. Current PS4 slim is about the same size as the original PS2. 4 years later, PS2 was reduced to SP2 Slim. So how small can a PS4 Superslim become in ~2020?

• For starters you're going to need more space for the GDDR chips than the PS2 needed for its memory.
• You're always going to need a larger PSU.
  • Although you can go with an external PSU brick. But I've heard how much some people hate PSU bricks.
• You're going to need a beefier cooling system than the PS2 required as well. Even with another shrink the SOC is going to consume significantly more power than the PS2 SOC.
• It needs some sort of fixed storage and unlike PS3 you're going to need a lot of it as all games are installed to mass storage now, AFAIK. The only way to shrink the storage would be going with either EMC SSD (slow, especially if garbage collection kicks in at which point it's slower than 2.5" HDDs) or an M.2 SSD. That's going to impact the price. Even a decently performing 64 GB EMC SSD (IE - not slower than a 2.5" HDD) will run you more than they are likely paying for a 1 TB HDD. But a 64 GB SSD wouldn't allow you to install some of the larger games. So, IMO 128 GB would be the minimum required.
  • I guess being able to use an external HDD to install games to mitigates the need for large amounts of mass storage I don't think it'd allow you to go under 128 GB unless you start putting disclaimers on all large games that they can't be used with the "mini PS4" without buying an external drive.

On the flip side you can choose not to include an optical drive to save some space. But the question then becomes if they are getting a 100 USD console because they can't afford or don't want to pay for a higher priced console, how likely is it that they can afford or are willing to pay for high speed broadband with large data caps in order to download everything?

That also comes into play with the fact that if they need to get an external HDD to be able to install more than 1 game or even 1 game (if the internal SSD is too small) that sort of defeats the purpose of a 99 USD price point to some extent.

Still, if price was not a factor a PS4 on 7 nm with exotic cooling, an decently sized SSD, no optical drive, and a external PSU brick could possibly be built to the same dimensions as a 99 USD PS2 without sacrificing the gaming experience in order to do so. Optional would be to require the purchase of an external HDD (but wouldn't the defeat the size comparison?)

Regards,
SB