So why are they expecting a drop in sales? Maybe it's due to the fact that they know they aren't dropping the price this FY.
Perhaps just going by or stating what is typical for year 5 for PS consoles.... However this is no ordinary year 5, I think Sony has a chance to break even the highest hardware year in 2016, so yes, they're being ultra conservative here..... I believe GOW sales and it's push in April is already a great start for FY Q1 2018. Spiderman will push quite a few consoles next quarter and of course RDR and even the multiplat Spyro will push quite a few consoles when they land. That's not even counting a potential Dreams release date and other firm dates and announcements at this year's E3...Of course, there's always Q3 deals where PS4 vanilla should be found at $249 or lower and PRO at $299. Yet, what will drive PS4 beyond 16m this FY is certainly the software, this is without a doubt Sony's biggest year in terms of blockbuster titles......
The way I see it, they are already pretty good with their software stack this year. They should only release Days Gone in 2018 if it's ready and as polished as it could be, but I see Days Gone releasing in 2019 along with TLOU 2, Syphon Filter and Ghosts of Tsushima to round up that year, just in time for devs to completely shift over development to PS5 for a November 2020 release, even Dreams will be fine to release in 2019. So yes, since 2018 is already covered with lots of first parties and even third party exclusives to round it out and 2019 is basically the same...All arrows point to a 2020 PS5, which is where we will be seeing FF7 remake and Horizon 2, as most certainly, the former is not happening this gen.... But yes, 2018 is looking very strong from a sales perspective, relative to hardware and software sales alike.
One interesting thing I've always mentioned, is digital growth.... I always told folk that PSN is ridiculous when it comes to digital sales, I never had the stats till now barring some Ubisoft slides a few years ago, when I felt things were racking up on PS3. This gen however, the ease of pre-ordering and installs, every game being on the store, the frequent PSN sales with the plus discounts is really reeling people in the digital scape. I always used my own anecdote, to describe how I felt digital distribution was rising this gen. In essence, I have no discs for my PS4 barring Killzone Shadowfall from launch day, yet I still bought a digital copy including intercept on one of the PSN sales. I have no idea if my PS4 bluray drive still works tbh, he he!....I mean a 43% split to digital sales last quarter is pretty telling and the general uptick in digital sales in FY 2017 is a huge improvement over prior years. It's no wonder Sony made about twice the revenue of MS and Nintendo as far as gaming goes.....
It's crazy too, because, another thing which saw huge growth was PSN subs, an uptick of 8 million subs from last FY to this one, that is insane. PSN subs are at 34.2 million, which is in the general ball park of total XBOX-ONE sales. In esssence, this is close to half of the total PS installbase being plus subscribers. Yet, as impressive as these numbers are, It's also interesting that these numbers could easily be higher, (not putting any ideas in Sony's coporate head
)..... but a juggernaut like fortnite is not behind a paywall and pretty much all F2P games on PSN are not, thankfully of course. Yet, they could have made even more bank if they taxed all those fortnite players...... In general, very interesting information from this report, especially when many analysts declared the gaming industry would implode and suffer a breakdown just prior to this gen. The PS4 is on track to get to 100 million way before the PS2 did, not too shabby innit?
As for a potential price drop this year, I don't see it, barring temporary price drops for the holidays. I do however see a price drop coming in 2019 though, even early on, perhaps with a PRO slim and a slimmer base model. I just don't see why they should drop the price yet, it's selling comfortably ahead of the competition, even in non blockbuster months, so they would be amiss to pass on that profit for numbers so soon, which they also happen to be ahead of the competiton by a country mile also. The way I see it, Sony should just rake in the profits for now, they will surely need the R&D funds for a very formidable PS5 in 2020 and it's launch. So, they should not lower the price of PS4 to $199 till they reach the 100 million milestone, which also happens to be in 2019, which is when they would have past that milestone. At that point, they could rely on the mass market buying PS4 in droves as they did PS2's, which means a very attractive value proposition late in the cycle at $199 with lots of great software to choose from. When all is said and done, I could see PS4 doing 140-150 million units total. Perhaps even more.....
So yes, with a PS4 at mass market in early 2019 and perhaps even further reduced to $179.99-149.99 in early 2020. Sony would be full fledged into PS5 development from as early as their price drop to $199 in 2019 to mid 2019. Most of their big studios would be rounding their projects on PS4 that year, so I see most shifting to full fledged PS5 development by then.....One thing's for sure, even then, PS4 will be selling very well when those last big exclusives hit in 2019 and it won't depreciate too much in 2020 due to further price cuts.....PS4 will only stop selling when PS5 lands, especially if PS5 has PS4-BC....Yet a cheap console with lots of great software has proven to continue to sell even with new hardware at the gates
....Interesting times ahead indeed......
