It’s no secret that the PS4 is dominating the current generation of consoles and has been for quite some time now. Destiny has more features coming to the PS4 and PS3 than Microsoft’s XBOX ONE. Sony’s press conferences brought us all on the hype train for Watch Dogs (for better or for worse). On top of all of that, the PS4 has more anticipated titles like LittleBigPlanet 3, No Man’s Sky, and Bloodborne all on the horizon. At least, that’s why I think the console is succeeding. Then again, I don’t even own a PS4-what do I know?
Apparently, I know more about the PS4’s success than Shuhei Yoshida himself.
That’s right, Griffin Cost’s bringing you your daily dose of grand-scale irony. Yoshida recently stated in an interview with Eurogamer that, while he is happy with the PS4’s success, he has no idea how it happened. The 10 million sales and the statistics behind those sales have confused him so badly that he’s not only asking marketing teams for their opinions on the PS4’s success, he’s started asking journalists.
I’m not one to rob the original authors of views, so if you want the full interview, I’ve linked the article above. However, there is one comment I find a bit peculiar, one that has me a bit intrigued about the PS4’s sales as well…
“I’m asking marketing people to tell us why. They’ve been to people who already purchased, and some of the early data was amazing in terms of the number of people who didn’t used to own PS3 have already purchased PS4. So we are getting lots of new customers coming into PlayStation. And some people never purchased any last-gen hardware: PS3, or Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii. So where did they come from?”
The PS3, XBOX 360, and Nintendo Wii were all very successful consoles, and I for one thought most of the potential market for video games had been already tapped. So, in the same vein of Yoshida’s interviewing interviewers, I ask you, reader; where do you think these extra sales came from? Why are so many people who didn’t buy a console in almost a decade suddenly picking up a PS4? And finally, have we finally, as Yoshida fears, tapped the maximum potential market for consoles?
