All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2024 edition]

[Cappuccino]

New hardware will sell out, so selling out at launch means nothing. However, PS5 Pro hasn't even done that. It's available now in stock on Amazon. Once initial interest has passed, ongoing interest is indeed where we know how well a hardware is received. I'm reminded of Wii U's initial strong launch sales and trying to convey that meant nothing in the long run, and indeed it didn't!

Mixed opinions of PS5 Pro won't help drive strong long-term adoption, so I'm not expecting great things. It really is for the PS faithful and who knows how large that audience is? Although bringing significant improvements to PSVR2 (@Dictator DF needs to do an article on that!) perhaps makes it more desirable for those enthusiasts who seem more willing to spend large on their experience.

My theory on why this type of product won’t sell well is that, unlike in previous generations, the pro console is no longer the best way to experience these titles, PC is. 4Pro could make sense if you were an enthusiast (maybe a 4k early adopter) who wanted to play the best version of GoW 2018 or whatever, but now those enthusiasts will just buy it on PC and undoubtedly have a better experience (provided they have better hardware than the 5Pro which frankly isn’t a very high bar to hit).

This product just seems weird to me, consoles now are just low cost PCs with expensive ecosystems, and basically only have timed exclusives at this point, however this isn’t particularly low cost. Why would an enthusiast buy this instead of investing into a PC?

On another note, did they add Dolby Vision support (for video not games)/an upgraded HDMI port? One of the most obnoxious parts of the PS5 Amateur was the <48Gbps HDMI port which meant 120Hz signals could not be sent with RGB 4:4:4 color. DV should have been able to be added with just a firmware update, at least for streamed movies, Xbox has had it for years (not for disks but it gets Profile 5 for streamed media).

 

[see colon]

On another note, did they add Dolby Vision support (for video not games)/an upgraded HDMI port? One of the most obnoxious parts of the PS5 Amateur was the <48Gbps HDMI port which meant 120Hz signals could not be sent with RGB 4:4:4 color. DV should have been able to be added with just a firmware update, at least for streamed movies, Xbox has had it for years (not for disks but it gets Profile 5 for streamed media).

DF mentioned something about them adding compression to properly support 8k but it still has the same limitations at 4k, I think. It might have been during this weekly direct.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Why would an enthusiast buy this instead of investing into a PC?

The fact that you're asking this question boggles my mind. Almost every console gamer I know wouldn't dream of playing games on a PC.

 

[Cappuccino]

The fact that you're asking this question boggles my mind. Almost every console gamer I know wouldn't dream of playing games on a PC.

Boggles your mind? After the Xbone/PS4 generation we saw a massive exodus from console to PC as consoles that generation kinda sucked and PCs became even easier to procure and use (I was among those).

Every single console player I know has either started transitioning to PC or has essentially already transitioned and keeps their console for some other purpose. In fact I know someone specifically building a PC because the PS5 Pro is comically poor value to them and they see the writing on the wall.

 

[Cappuccino]

DF mentioned something about them adding compression to properly support 8k but it still has the same limitations at 4k, I think. It might have been during this weekly direct.

So very strange to support 8k over functioning DV or full 4:4:4 chroma lol. Sony makes some of the best TVs on the market (expensive but that’s Sony for you) but their console is not very good at being a home theater solution. Ironic because the PS3 tried way harder to be a home theater piece.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Boggles your mind? After the Xbone/PS4 generation we saw a massive exodus from console to PC as consoles that generation kinda sucked and PCs became even easier to procure and use (I was among those).

Mass exodus? Didn't the PS4 sell 120 million units or something?

In an industry thread I have to call people out for being out of touch with reality.

PCs are amazing, but there's definitely still a bifurcation in the market. There might be a slow bleed to PC, but I also think the Switch is good enough that it slowed adoption to newer consoles.

To the topic of PS5 Pro - Sony is just killing the scalpers right now. They'll lower the price rapidly as demand subsides. It's just smart.

 

[Cappuccino]

Mass exodus? Didn't the PS4 sell 120 million units or something?

In an industry thread I have to call people out for being out of touch with reality.

PCs are amazing, but there's definitely still a bifurcation in the market. There might be a slow bleed to PC, but I also think the Switch is good enough that it slowed adoption to newer consoles.

To the topic of PS5 Pro - Sony is just killing the scalpers right now. They'll lower the price rapidly as demand subsides. It's just smart.

And how many units did Xbone sell? It’s not just comparing PS3 -> PS4 sales, a lot of people bought either a PS3 or Xbox 360 (or Wii I guess but Nintendo is separate anyways) and didn’t buy either a PS4 or Xbone, or bought it as a secondary system after switching to PC. There was a marked shift in the market last generation as PC became more viable for regular people. ‘Console killers’ were all the rage. Anecdotal but I know a ton of people that don’t care about computers outside of this context that switched over to PC last or this generation.

You can call me out of touch but idk wtf ‘killing the scalpers’ means, if scalpers can’t sell units then clearly demand is a lot less than the scalpers thought. Products in high demand usually sell out, as has every console launch I can remember (did PS3 sell out on launch?).

 

[see colon]

And how many units did Xbone sell? It’s not just comparing PS3 -> PS4 sales, a lot of people bought either a PS3 or Xbox 360 (or Wii I guess but Nintendo is separate anyways) and didn’t buy either a PS4 or Xbone, or bought it as a secondary system after switching to PC. There was a marked shift in the market last generation as PC became more viable for regular people

Global gaming console installed base 2025 | Statista

The three primary players in the console gaming market are Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, with a combined installed base of over 142 million gaming consoles in 2020.

www.statista.com

Ignore the results after 2020 because those are forecasts. The console market has been largely flat with an expected slow drop off near the end of the 8th gen and a bump back up at the launch of gen 9. Any losses the console market has experienced to pc have likely been negated by new gamers aging into the console market.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This product just seems weird to me, consoles now are just low cost PCs with expensive ecosystems, and basically only have timed exclusives at this point, however this isn’t particularly low cost. Why would an enthusiast buy this instead of investing into a PC?

I still read enough random PC issues on reddit to be scared off PC. People out there with games that just stop running properly, and those cases are fringe things no-one can explain or solve.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anecdotal but I know a ton of people that don’t care about computers outside of this context that switched over to PC last or this generation.

Such anecdotal evidence tends to be very localised, and probably self-propagating. Among a group, if some make the switch, they might encourage peers to do so also. I don't recall any gaming business stories saying the console market was dwindling or there was any discernible transition.

This is EA's revenue by platform to 2024


And AB's to 2022

PC proportion seems about the same for both. EA saw a big uptick for PC in 2022 that might be indicative of something, or a change in monetisation that more greatly impacted PC.

A look at sales of Sony's first-titles on PC doesn't smack of a mass exodus either, with the best selling just a few million.

 

[Cappuccino]

Global gaming console installed base 2025 | Statista

The three primary players in the console gaming market are Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, with a combined installed base of over 142 million gaming consoles in 2020.

www.statista.com

Ignore the results after 2020 because those are forecasts. The console market has been largely flat with an expected slow drop off near the end of the 8th gen and a bump back up at the launch of gen 9. Any losses the console market has experienced to pc have likely been negated by new gamers aging into the console market.

I can’t actually read this due to not having an account but the console market being flat across almost two generations is not a sign of a healthy market lol. Population has grown in this time and if you aren’t growing, you’re shrinking.

I still read enough random PC issues on reddit to be scared off PC. People out there with games that just stop running properly, and those cases are fringe things no-one can explain or solve.

Stop reading Reddit posts and actually try it, the only time I have problems on PC are when I don’t update the drivers for a new title (and even then, usually runs fine, just not at peak).

These days consoles aren’t even guaranteed to run correctly. My friend crashes more in our Warzone games on his PS5 than I’ve ever had on my PC.

Let me put it this way: my wife is certainly not a computer person, she uses a MacBook for her daily job as a teacher and never uses windows outside of using her gaming PC. With a little help from me she was able to completely DIY assemble her rig and maybe once a year I have to help her troubleshoot something odd (usually not even a game breaking problem, more like ‘how do I fix my RGB’). And she runs Radeon, which is probably 3x as buggy as Nvidia!

 

[Cappuccino]

Such anecdotal evidence tends to be very localised, and probably self-propagating. Among a group, if some make the switch, they might encourage peers to do so also. I don't recall any gaming business stories saying the console market was dwindling or there was any discernible transition.

This is EA's revenue by platform to 2024
View attachment 12278

And AB's to 2022
View attachment 12279
PC proportion seems about the same for both. EA saw a big uptick for PC in 2022 that might be indicative of something, or a change in monetisation that more greatly impacted PC.

A look at sales of Sony's first-titles on PC doesn't smack of a mass exodus either, with the best selling just a few million.

EA’s largest products are sports games that all have very console heavy fan bases, and even then you can see their PC base is growing alongside their console base. Same with AB, COD up until maybe MW2019 was essentially console only, the ports weren’t cross play and generally niche.

Let me put it this way: it’s no coincidence that in the past 5 years a lot more emphasis has been put on porting titles than in previous eras. Sony wouldn’t run Nixxes as essentially exclusively a porting shop for their first party titles if they didn’t think that, long term, it’s probably going to be a PC landscape.

Of course, that’s not to say consoles are dead, like my original comment alluded to there’s always going to be a contingent of people who want simple and cheap (at the start) gaming. What I’m saying is at the *enthusiast level* (ie the types that would buy a $700 pro console) I think this day and day they’d probably just buy a PC instead.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Stop reading Reddit posts and actually try it, the only time I have problems on PC are when I don’t update the drivers for a new title (and even then, usually runs fine, just not at peak).

1) That's an expensive gamble.

2) I have a PC and I have marginal issues every once in a while. I also know people who have PCs and marginal issues once in a while. I'm not basing my decision on not spending £1000 on a new PC to replace console gaming on two posts about people not being able to run Apex Legends any more.

 

[Cappuccino]

1) That's an expensive gamble.

2) I have a PC and I have marginal issues every once in a while. I also know people who have PCs and marginal issues once in a while. I'm not basing my decision on not spending £1000 on a new PC to replace console gaming on two posts about people not being able to run Apex Legends any more.

All I can say is the amount of issues I’ve had on PC roughly equal the amount of issues I’ve had on consoles. I never really got the reliability benefit, at least in a modern context.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've never had the USB ports on a console get confused and fail to connect a controller as a result. I've never had a console boot up and tell me the OS wasn't legit and I needed to call a support line. I've never had a console fail to turn on because something was plugged into a USB port and it decided it'd try to boot off that instead. If you have an issue on console, thousands of others have it to and it tends to get resolved. You won't have an issue where you ask support and they shrug and it never gets solved because you're the only person in the world it's happening to.

There's safety in numbers that fixed hardware brings.

 

[Cappuccino]

I've never had the USB ports on a console get confused and fail to connect a controller as a result. I've never had a console boot up and tell me the OS wasn't legit and I needed to call a support line. I've never had a console fail to turn on because something was plugged into a USB port and it decided it'd try to boot off that instead. If you have an issue on console, thousands of others have it to and it tends to get resolved. You won't have an issue where you ask support and they shrug and it never gets solved because you're the only person in the world it's happening to.

There's safety in numbers that fixed hardware brings.

I’ve never had any of these happen on PC, except the boot drive thing and that is simply fixed by not plugging in bootable windows install media when you don’t want to install windows.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I’ve never had any of these happen on PC,

So it's never happened to me or people I know?

except the boot drive thing and that is simply fixed by not plugging in bootable windows install media when you don’t want to install windows.

There are no bootable devices connected. It happens randomly when I have USB KB, mouse dongle, controller plugged in. I have to remove them all to boot and then it'll work fine, until the next random event where it decides not to work.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Like I said, the console market isn't as healthy as it used to be, but what I'm mainly arguing against is the notion that the majority of console owners view the PC as a viable alternative. Most don't. That's why the PS5 Pro can sell for a lot at launch as the hardcore PS5 users aren't even comparing it to a PC alternative. They're just console enthusiasts that want it.

What I mean by Sony killing scalpers is that at the launch of PS5 Pro they are capturing the surplus that scalpers would ordinarily capture by raising the base price enough and dampening demand.

Ordinarily Sony would build it for $400 and sell it for $500. Netting only $100 and the scalpers would pick up a ton of them and sell them for $700. Now Sony's just selling them for $700 and making $300 instead. Even if they sell half the units they would have, they'll actually make more money. It's smart business. They can always adjust aggressively as their inventory builds. The ideal price for Sony is the one that discourages scalping enough that they are still available at stores.

 

[homerdog]

So it's never happened to me or people I know?

There are no bootable devices connected. It happens randomly when I have USB KB, mouse dongle, controller plugged in. I have to remove them all to boot and then it'll work fine, until the next random event where it decides not to work.

I think your computer is fucked up. I support hundreds of Windows PCs and servers and if these issues were widespread I wouldn't have time to be typing this.

 

[Cappuccino]

So it's never happened to me or people I know?

There are no bootable devices connected. It happens randomly when I have USB KB, mouse dongle, controller plugged in. I have to remove them all to boot and then it'll work fine, until the next random event where it decides not to work.

I’ve literally never seen this happen in my life lol, if it’s not bootable then UEFI won’t attempt to boot to it, it just goes to the next item on the list.

I’ve got all sorts of esoteric USB devices connected at all times and this hasn’t happened to me, at least in recent memory.