sales expectations on this forum before launch was that the Pro would do "gangbusters"
I don't remember much of the anecdotes for the sales expectations for Pro, but I'll just say this.
There were dozens, maybe even hundreds of different assumptions, narratives and guesswork running around through so many different people, that is still continuing on to this day with Scorpio with assumptions of exclusive games for Scorpio or assumptions of how they'll be marketed, etc, when all we have at the different point of time is what it is... guesswork.
Among those many speculations and expectations were also those people who also said Sony would not undermine their PS4 48+ million vanilla install base, and that while Pro is a big upgrade, Sony won't massively push it in fear of alienation. I never partaked in sales expectation guesswork, but I'm one of those who vehemently believed that there will not be any Pro bundle this holiday season at all because the priority is profit maximisation and that any Pro bundle will be left to next year.
There were also those who guessed that Sony will not splinter the base and that Pro is just what has been exactly what it is since the documentation leaks... a more powerful PS4 and that's it. And that with those lowered expectations of what type of product it is, the natural assumption that it won't be a super huge product out the gate.
Sometimes... shockingly, a company doesn't do some of the stuff that is guessed by forum-goers, because not everything guessed and theory-crafted by us... are valid?
If you look at what Sony wants to ship for the next FY you can see they don't expect a huge amount of Pro sales.
This.
If we looked at what Sony projects for FY2016 in terms of total PS4 sales, they were the last in the world to expect gangbuster sales, but rather just:
- modest launch sales that would potentially add up to 1-1.5 million in first month
- additional buffer of 30% incremental sales for the remaining 4 months
Those are the estimate numbers that Sony would need to hit 20mil PS4s by March. None of those are factors that would had been contributed by a sales monster.
