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[Faustek]

Not in the Europe that I know, where Playstation is synonym with gaming console and Nintendo to handheld. And as far as prices, just a big no too, PS4 has been consistently cheaper since day one. Still waiting for this "US focus" stigma to be explained.

Agree with other posters to the fact that gaming, in most of Europe, is not seen as a valid adult Hobbie.

Uhm, the XBO was about $10-$100 cheaper than the PS4 here in Scandinavia. Now I can't find it or the price is back to XBO being around $50 more expensive. Kinect included day one European bundle.

And US stigma? Are you people blind? US stigma.

 

[Y2Kev]

That year of absolute toxicity about the platform amongst gamers and the whisper campaign that it was worse than a PS360 / chalkboard / reflection in the glass of rain outside?

The year of toxicity was self-inflicted. Nintendo didn't have any software for months. Check the January NPD sales. It has nothing to do with gamers.

And I'm lolling at you citing the chalkboard and out-in-the-rain image. Absolutely lolling.

It was hardly a whisper campaign. People were openly hostile at what was a very poor platform.

 

[Dash Kappei]

As far as I know AESVI's "prominent" members at the Drago D'Oro Award (March 11) offhand gave a figure of <50k for Xbox One, so I honestly doubt it'll triple its sales with the PS4 now being readily available during next Christmas... but hey, I'd definitely prefer not going down a PS monopoly once again.

 

[LiquidSolid]

Heavy online gaming, Kinect language, US TV contents only. I believe many more reasons but I can't think of right now.

Marketing and game lineup as well.

But the crocodile is eating the 150k

I tried to put as much information into the title and may have ended up making it more confusing than it needed to be. My bad :\

You probably should've just noted both estimates as estimates. Something like:
Italy "Next-Gen" HW [PS4 210k] and LTD 2014 Estimates [PS4 550k, XB1 150k] via Ubisoft

 

[JonathanPower]

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Once the TVTVTV pre 2013-E3 was over, Microsoft has said close to nothing about multimedia, and nobody beside Neogaf gaming enthusiasts know anything about that show.

You are forgetting the extra $100 price tag; MS forced the consumers to buy Kinect, and they even said that without Kinect the console would not function properly. By contrast, Sony didn't force you to buy the camera.

 

[Hyun Sai]

No surprise here. With the exception of the UK, Europe was already Sony land last gen with overpriced PS3 that came a year later, so I expect at least 4:1 this gen.

 

[yurinka]

I thought Spain was Sonyland, but hey!

I agree that numbers look bad, but I don't see stables of system selling IP at Sony. I mean, Uncharted will sell machines whether Halo won't? Or Drive Club vs horizon? Etc...

Worldwide (and even more proportionally in European Sonyland countries like Spain or Italy):
Gran Turismo sales > Halo sales
http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html

Uncharted sells like Gears of War, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Little Big Planet also use to sell several millions of copies, like the Quantic Dream games or MGS4 did.
I'm pretty sure most of these games sell in a level comparable if not higher than Fable, Forza, Dance Central, Dead Rising 1 & 3, Alan Wake and similar MS exclusives.

Even considering the issue with PS3 being that expensive, being released more than a year later, etc.

 

[yurinka]

double post, sorry

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

It was hardly a whisper campaign. People were openly hostile at what was a very poor platform.

The whisper campaign about its power.
And yes, people were openly hostile about it as a platform not just for the year 'headstart' it had, but the year preceding it - arguably the 2 years preceding it based on its initial E3 showing.

When a console is released that has been openly mocked for a year prior to release, has various "anonymous inside sources" talking about how its performance is "sub-par" to existing consoles, and has third party support drying up pretty much before it has even launched, talking about its "uncontested year headstart" rings pretty hollow.

 

[Valtekken]

Let me tell you, those numbers are spot on. Here in Italy, as someone has already said in this thread, gaming=PlayStation, so it's definitely believable that PlayStation 4 has already sold more than the XBone's projected sales. Still, those numbers are low as fuck compared to other countries, and the problem is that gaming is seen as something for kids (despite the presence of games like TLOU, CoD, BF, Halo, etc.), which is all fine and dandy until you get to highschool. From that age, it begins to be seen as something to grow out of as soon as possible. Sure, many people at that age still play, but no more than an hour a week. Anybody who plays more than that is more or less immediately frown upon and seen as a nerd. I've lost count of all the times my parents have told me "Grow up, stop playing so much, do something else (I lift three days a week and go jogging every two days, and I hang out with my friends every night, so this kind of remark is pretty unwarranted), how long do you think you can go on on playing?".
This place sucks.
P.S.: Sorry if there are some mistakes, English isn't my main language (as you might have noted)

 

[Codeblew]

Next gen consoles are just way too expensive at the moment for your typical Italian to even consider buying one. Most people just go like "lol €400 for a Playstation, fuck that, you can't even pirate it. Just gonna get a pair of shoes and a shirt instead".

What has always surprised me is that consoles and, even more significantly, videogames are much cheaper in the US than in Europe, when, if anything, it should be the other way around since Americans are far more likely to spend large percentages of their income in entertainment than Europeans, and Italians in particular.

Don't European prices include the VAT tax? American prices don't include tax.

 

[Deadstar]

Considering Italy has a population of 60M those numbers are surprisingly small.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

[Sickboy007]

Don't European prices include the VAT tax? American prices don't include tax.

They're still way higher. A new, fully priced current-gen title sold in a physical store costs as much as 95$.

 

[Sentenza]

Europe is not really big on consoles.

Nothing suprising PS brand is really really strong in EU.

Let's start premising that Europe is not an homogeneous market and it never was.
If look at Italy and Germany you will see two very, very different scenarios, for instance.

 

[uomoartificiale]

Let's start premising that Europe is not an homogeneous market and it never was.
If look at Italy and Germany you will see two very, very different scenarios, for instance.

I may sound harsh to my countrymen but the whole gaming community is just about FIFA and COD, nothing else. You don't need to upgrade to next-gen in order to play those titles. There was once a solid interest in adventure games, mainly due to the fact that Lucasarts games were localized in a very professional manner (with top notch dubs too), but now it's just the desert out there. In Italy video games are just toys, nothing more.

 

[Codeblew]

They're still way higher. A new, fully priced current-gen title sold in a physical store costs as much as 95$.

Ouch. I didn't realize US and EU conversion rate was so off. That comes out to $129.15 US dollars.

No no, 95$ as in dollars. That's 70&#8364; by the way.

Ahh, I see. Still pretty high. I live in Oregon so I don't have to pay any tax at all fortunately.

 

[Sickboy007]

Ouch. I didn't realize US and EU conversion rate was so off. That comes out to $129.15 US dollars.

No no, 95$ as in dollars. That's 70€ by the way.