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PS4 Console Sells 91.6 Million Units Worldwide




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Aca Vuksa



Joined: 22 Mar 2018
Posts: 643
Location: Nis, Serbia
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:25 am Reply with quote
This is interesting, i hope this console sells very well despite the SIE censorship policy.
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CastMember1991



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 857
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:27 am Reply with quote
Hopefully it lasts 15 years. I want to be able to get one before the inevitable PS5 is released. I love my Switch, but it doesn't have FunimationNow available.
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GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:35 am Reply with quote
Your realize they've been selling the PS4 since November 2013?

The system has about maxed out its sales. It may sell over 100 million consoles eventually but it won't equal the PS2's sales.
It has maybe 2 more years before they launch PS5 and PS4 will probably still be in production for at least 3-4 years from now.

I think it's doing okay! Wink

The censorship policy, btw, only generally affects the eroge/visual novel games which DON'T have a huge following in the West anyway.
You have to sometimes step back and take a look at reality... Anime is STILL fringe sales-wise compared to Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Japanese dating sims and girly shooter games have never been huge sellers outside of Japan, either.

Where the censorship policy is a pain in a butt is if you're a developer and have to make calls to California, US in the middle of the night instead of dealing with a contact in your own country. THAT I can see being a pain in the butt on top of dealing with guys who are utterly CLUELESS about the acceptable standards in your country.
What Sony has done is about centralizing and reducing costs instead having a dozen or more locations that approve game concepts and make rulings. Yes, political correctness is a pain in the butt but I don't think that's the whole story here. You can look it at as a "conspiracy" and Shonen Jump Weekly plot all you want but sometimes the true reasoning is a lot more innocent.

As far as consoles go, they haven't been selling well in Japan since the end of the PS2 days/beginning of PS3. The videogame market in Japan is utterly different from Europe and North America. They're more into mobiles now...
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Aca Vuksa



Joined: 22 Mar 2018
Posts: 643
Location: Nis, Serbia
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:56 am Reply with quote
GeorgeC wrote:

The videogame market in Japan is utterly different from Europe and North America. They're more into mobiles now...


Yeah, Japan is shifting from console and handhelds away to smartphone games in recent years. A lot of Japanese gamers now prefer smartphone other than console and handhelds instead.

And the console/handheld market in Japan could shrink if Japanese people contiunes to play smartphone games (even Japan has an population problems, which could affect Japan's gaming market in its domestic sales).

(sorry for my poor English)
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Silver Kirin



Joined: 09 Aug 2018
Posts: 1105
PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2019 6:14 pm Reply with quote
It's incredible how Sony managed to recover from the PlaySation 3 era, I know that the PS3 managed to sell almost 80 million units but Sony came in third place against the 360 and the Wii, which didn't look good considering that the PS2 became the best selling console of all time.
I don't think that Sony will anounce the PS5 this year, and even if they did I think the PS4 has maybe 2 or 3 years left. My main worry is that even if the PS4 is a success, Sony latest decisions are a bit alarming, between the discontinuation of the Vita with no apparent successor and the failure of the PSOne Classic, coupled with Sony's latest censorship policies (which I don't want to talk about them ) Sony's future is a bit umpredictable.
Still, the PlayStation brand is Sony's biggest cash cow alongside Sony Pictures (particularly Spider-Man), so I don't think they are going to make enough mistakes to devalue their brand.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 2:03 pm Reply with quote
Silver Kirin wrote:
It's incredible how Sony managed to recover from the PlaySation 3 era, I know that the PS3 managed to sell almost 80 million units but Sony came in third place against the 360 and the Wii, which didn't look good considering that the PS2 became the best selling console of all time.
I don't think that Sony will anounce the PS5 this year, and even if they did I think the PS4 has maybe 2 or 3 years left. My main worry is that even if the PS4 is a success, Sony latest decisions are a bit alarming, between the discontinuation of the Vita with no apparent successor and the failure of the PSOne Classic, coupled with Sony's latest censorship policies (which I don't want to talk about them ) Sony's future is a bit umpredictable.
Still, the PlayStation brand is Sony's biggest cash cow alongside Sony Pictures (particularly Spider-Man), so I don't think they are going to make enough mistakes to devalue their brand.


The Vita going away was understandable. Even Nintendo can see the decline of dedicated handhelds. Thus we have the Switch that caters to both options.

Sony may consider the Switch model as a potential retry, but they likely have bigger fish to fry, and both they and Microsoft as well as other competitors are looking at the Streaming market, which technically can also cater to handhelds.

The PSOne Classic thing was a misfire, but overall, even if competently handled, it would not have the ability to leverage titles the same way Nintendo does, mostly because the bulk of PlayStation successes have been third party. And many classic old games that defined the era are a licensing nightmare that we'll never see again due to the attempt to take advantage of CD-audio licensed pop music. Just looking at the landscape they probably wanted the least bit of effort put into it. And they'd rather just sell you classics digitally.

That said, PSNow has been successful for Sony as a service, and PSVR is a pretty big win for them as well. So you win some, you lose some.

If there's one wish I want it's to bring back backwards compatibility with PS4/PS2 and PSOne titles if PS3 still isn't feasible yet, but someday it ought to be, and by that I do mean support disc-based BC.

I believe PS5 is scheduled for late 2020. PS4 will likely get a price cut in winter 2019 to clear inventory. And I speculate that streaming will be a major push, and predict the ability to stream PS5 games over PS4, though you'd probably have to buy a PS5 controller depending on what new things they do. Also I expect big things for a PSVR2.
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