Considering its current demand, I don't doubt 6 million PS5 would be a feasible number if it wasn't supply constrained.
But the thing is, it is supply-constrained, so it's something to take into account and I'm curious when it will finally stop being supply-constrained. Series X, I think, is also somewhat supply-constrained, but less so than PS5. I don't think Series S is supply-constrained at all, at least outside of certain parts of the US. But at the same time, that system seems designed more as the "holiday shopping-friendly" console.
Hmmmm so roughly the same. Still pretty impressive but demand is way higher. I'd say Sony will discount the ps5 at a slower rate as consumers will be happy to pay full price for a long time. It's a frenzy out there atm.
They're about to get Nintendo-esque in terms of evergreen pricing, though in this case with the hardware of all things.
If we saw a day where a console sold more than 200million, it would be excellent for console gaming. It would allow them pack more high performance and better tech into the next iterations because of the economies of scale and they could fund even more exclusives, which would only grow core gaming and allow more people experience high quality AAA games.
You don't need 200 million units sold to get any of that. PS4 will end up selling less than PS2 yet has been a lot more profitable for Sony and 3P publishers than that system ever was. It's about the ecosystem these days, and that goes well beyond how many consoles you've sold.
I know some people like to (rather unfairly) bash MS for focusing less on consoles sold, but they're right insofar as not relying on simply console unit sales to determine success. What's it matter if you sell x million of consoles if your attach rates are in the trash, no one's subscribing to your services and you even have to put those consoles on discount sales in order to move volume? That's partly why Microsoft are focused more on user engagement and the overall ecosystem (though they still care at least somewhat about console sales too, they just aren't vocal about it).
In a similar way, Sony can afford to be a bit more upfront with console sale numbers, but they know they need full ecosystem engagement in order to keep revenue and profits for the division on the up. If by some freak of circumstances PS Plus subscriptions fall off or attach rates decline sharply, etc., then touting number of consoles sold ends up more like celebrating a paper champion belt.
You can offset smaller economies of scale in parts securement by driving up profit in actual game and subscription sales. That's kind of been Microsoft's focus for the past few years; Sony has the benefit of having very large game/subscription sales (well, at least PS Plus in terms of subs; PS Now is further behind on that note) and very large volume of hardware sales alongside that.