PS4 slows as the transition nears

November 7th, 2019, 20:54 Posted By: wraggster

PlayStation 4 is slowing down a little -- and where only a short while ago that would have been a the-sky-is-falling kind of pronouncement, right now it's probably fine.
The console, coming up shortly on its sixth birthday, has outperformed all expectations and is now the second-best selling home console in history -- comfortably ahead of the PS1 and the Wii, though still tens of millions of units behind the staggering performance of the PS2. A bit of softness in its sales figures at this point, with the full-year sales numbers being revised down from 15 million to 13.5 million units, suggests that the PS2's record might remain unchallenged, but it's not actually damaging in terms of the PlayStation business overall, either for Sony or for its third-party partners.
If the PS4's sales are slowing at a faster than expected pace -- and to be clear, that minor full-year shortfall doesn't really show the scale of the downturn in the graph, with Q2 shipments of PS4 hardware actually down some 28% year-on-year -- the real question is not what it means for PS4 itself, whose place in the market is already well-secured, but what it means for the planned transition to PS5 next year.

There are 0 comments - Join In and Discuss Here