Sony misses PS5 sales target as console enters ‘latter stage of its life cycle’
theverge.com
Sony misses PS5 sales target as console enters ‘latter stage of its life cycle’::Sony has cut its sales forecast by 4 million units for the fiscal year, down from 25 million to 21 million. It comes as the company missed its sales projections by a million.
Just go PC and don't worry about corporate lifecycles anymore
gpu and cpu vendor enter the chat
Fair but thats your choice to upgrade. No one says you have to, and they don't lock games behind needing insert current gen CPU or gpu
Your choice to upgrade just your GPU for as much or more than the entire cost of a PS5 as frequent or more frequently than you’d need to buy a new PS5.
As an avid PC gamer and PlayStation enjoyer, part of the console appeal is being able to drop a relatively small amount of money (compared to a gaming PC) on a single console and then you just don’t have to worry about upgrades or the performance of games for like 6+ years. There are a lot of us long time computer nerds that are just tired of unoptimized trash or new technologies making our rigs outdated in as little as a year or two.
There's also the simplicity. I enjoy my PC for sure but for some people the ease of popping in a disc or downloading the title and it running perfectly on the first try is a major selling point. Troubleshooting my Ex's PC for 2 hours only to realise I didn't install the standoffs is an experience I can't get on console.
Hey, have some faith in yourself! I'm sure you can fuck up your console hardware just as well as your ex's PC!
Oh yeah 100%. If I want to play the latest casual open world adventure game, I don’t want to spend time trying to figure out why I’m having mysterious frame rate dips. Do I need new drivers? Is the game poorly optimized? Is it a bug? Is their V-sync implementation broken? Is it an issue with my specific graphics card vendor so I’m SOL? Is it a thermal issue? Let’s spend all Saturday figuring it out.
Or just buy it on PS5 and it just works.
more frequently is very far from the truth. only if you want the latest and greatest just for the sake of it, but you dont actually need ultra 4k graphics at 200fps.
my friend still has a gtx960, all modern titles run fine. my 2070 will last me at least 4 more years easily. my rig is more than 2 years old and theres nothing wrong with it at all.
Oh it’s the truth my friend. I have a rig with a GTX 1660 and it does not run modern games well at all. You can forget 4k 200fps, just 1080p and a stable 60 is more often than not too much to ask for. It absolutely does not keep up with the PS5 that is only a year newer and half the price. A lot of new releases are almost completely unplayable at this point but I can download the newest launch games on PS5 and know I’m getting the best experience.
PCs have a much higher quality and performance ceilings if you want to spend thousands, but the days of PC gaming being the platform for best value to performance are long over. Trying to buy a modest gaming PC that lasts you 5+ years is an exercise in frustration.
My brother in christ, the GTX1660 is a mid/low tier card from 5ish years ago. It also precedes and is inferior to the GPU in a PS5 by a loooooooooong shot. My 2070 is about as powerful as a PS5 and my experience is high graphics by default without issues every time.
That said, I'm struggling to believe you can't run games well. I play games regularly with someone who has a mobile 1650. A GTX960 can run literally all modern stuff with settings turned down, incl. Cyberpunk. Is a PS4 packing this much punch today? Nah.
It obviously isn't like it was 10yrs ago but its very much still cheaper in the long run if you don't mind that a 5yr old GPU can't play things at max settings anymore (just like consoles, btw!)
If you tell me you built your rig in the pandemic/bitcoin era It'll make much more sense to me.
My point exactly. This particular rig was built the year the PS5 came out. It was the current generation at the time and it cost twice as much as the PS5 despite having a GPU that was, in your words “inferior to the GPU in a PS5 by a looooooooong shot”.
You’re literally comparing your 2070 to the PS5 saying it’s “just as powerful” as a PS5 despite the fact that the cost of the 2070 alone is the exact same price as the entire ps5. Including the controller.
Despite my 1660 TI rig’s cost being twice that of a PS5, the 1660 as you mentioned struggles to play modern games unless the graphics are turned way, way, down and even then you’re often times shit out of luck. My PS5 that is the same age packs one hell of a punch still and plays any new game that comes out with fantastic graphics and a solid 60fps.
The PC is a great platform if you have fuck you money and have $2000 for a GPU alone. That’ll get you a machine that lasts. But the “pandemic/bitcoin” era never ended. Prices have come down, but the days of affordability and value are gone and aren’t coming back.
That explains it. It was a bad time to buy both pcs and consoles and is probably the crux of the issue here. If you are talking MSRP, sure, but the PS5 was heavily inflated at that time too and sometimes still is. That's if you were lucky to be able to even buy the thing. If you did find it at MSRP, thats was an awesome deal because consoles also tend to be much more cost effective vs PCs at launch.
Even then I still can't find any console in my country for cheaper than a comparable PC, and the PC will last longer than a console generation. I put this and the fact I'll need a PC anyway when doing my cost analysis. I also factor in game cost, and PSN, and such. I just realized this might be different in the US, sorry.
You don't need a 2k GPU, period. A fraction of that will get you console level performance, and thats almost always more than enough. If you have $200 or less you can probably get something that supercedes my 2070 by quite a bit today and have a few bucks left over. And you can resell your old one for some money back.
But lets just rewind a bit, If a 960 can run TLOU and hogwarts legacy, a 1660 should very much still run any game you throw at it, even at reduced settings. What kind of problems do you have with games not running? Did a new, very heavy game came out that I'm not aware of?
Maybe its something you can fix and be able to use it frustration-free?
Yes the crux of the issue is that it’s currently a bad time to buy PCs and a great time to buy consoles.
I think your issue is that you’re more than a little out of touch with reality. You can’t even get a 2070 for $200 or less, how would you get something better lmao.
A 960 only satisfies the minimum requirements for Hogwarts Legacy and it doesn’t even meet the minimum requirements for TLOUP2. So the “modern came that came out you don’t know about” came out 4 years ago my dude.
The way to fix the performance of a 1660 ti is to replace it with a better card, that will cost hundreds of dollars. Or I can just buy the same games in the PS5 that will run them flawlessly and continue to do so for a number of years with the money I already spent. Once again it’s a no brainer.
I'm exemplifying an old card (960) that run much newer games well because you just didn't elaborate how your 1660 is so bad. I don't see how any game woudn't run on it that soon.
And cards are not that expensive anymore. At least not here. A sub-$200 card can definetly be had that supercedes a 2070. I Google it and found it on stock.
But if you think its just not worth it, then it isn't really for you I suppose.
But it doesn’t run much newer games well at all. You listed two games as examples and one of them it doesn’t even meet the minimum requirements. The other one it barely meets. You’ve literally proved yourself wrong. The current recommendation for VRAM when playing modern games has been 8gb for a couple years now and it’s trending more towards 12gb now. The 1660ti only has 6. The card is just lacking, there’s nothing to be fixed.
They are still very expensive here in the US, and they don’t drop much in price after they age. If I go on Newegg right now and filter GPUs to $200 or less the best Nvidia card on offer is a 3050. A generation newer but two models below the 2070. You’re just making things up to prove your point but everything you say is just verifiably false lol. It’s like you’ve been thawed out of a block of ice after being frozen for 6 years and you’re not adapting well to your new reality.
And yes, it’s objectively not worth it unless you specifically want a gaming PC. If you’re in a position where you’re comparing a gaming PC and a console though, dollar for dollar, console wins. It’s just basic math, I don’t get what’s it’s so hard for you to understand.
I mean they kind of do with performance and unoptimised games. I can't play many current AAAs on my 1050Ti. Cyberpunk for example.
1050Ti is ps4-tier
it does run it at least medium settings though, unless theres something very wrong.
I've not even attempted cyberpunk cause i didn't want to waste money on it for a game that is unlikely to run well. I don't think it reaches their min specs, at least it didn't initially unless they've changed.
And yeah theoretically a 1050Ti is PS4 level but the heavy hitters of the PS4 would run like shit in comparison on my PC. Just due to how much better optimised console games are compared to their PC counterparts.
cyberpunk should definetly run well enough on that card. low/mid mixed settings at 1080p, about what the PS4 does. especially now that its all patched up.
ive 100% seen worse cards run it. cyberpunk is a pc first game.
get yourself a pirated copy and test it out. or even easier, theres probably tests on youtube for that card so you can judge it yourself.
now, yeah that era's ports were optimized like shit on pc and some are still bad to this day, but pc gamers get very caught up with the settings and how high they are when the consoles are probably running at "medium".
Alan Wake 2 enters the chat
The PS5 feels next-gen to me, rather than current gen, lol
Probably because I was a late adopter to the prior gen, and I don't have a current gen console (just a PC).
To me the PS5 feels like PS4.5 at most.
The box even says “8K capable” and they promised an amazing 4K-8K 120hz raytracing heaven before release. Every time I see the box or watch old presentation videos I feel scammed.
Because in reality almost all games have a pathetic “slow mode with higher res” (often 30 fps!) or “fast mode with previous generation graphics and resolution” (usually some variable upscaled mess and far from native 4K).
It’s still a decent machine (I like it being silent a lot, load times are also quite good) and I enjoy gaming regardless of performance BUT their promises were nothing but a marketing scam. It feels far from “next generation” to me.
(Same goes for Xbox Series X of course, it’s just as bad in this sense.)
We should see an improvement in game quality for the platform once last-gen sales drop off enough that developers only need to target current-gen.
Right now any game that comes out for both PS4+5 is bottlenecked by PS4 memory and performance, with only easy wins taken for PS5 like higher quality assets and faster IO/FPS.
Designing a game for current-gen platforms from the ground up is when we'll start to see some more impressive features, but there's still money on the table for PS4 so it'll be a few years (IMHO) before we see PS5 exclusives as the norm.
What I really read when you write that is "By the time the earnest benefits of the PS5 platform are realized, they'll be selling PS5 Pro's to brute force improvements".
I'm not so sure, there are already pure PS5/XSX games and they are not THAT impressive. Also as someone else commented, once they reach that time there will be a PS5 Pro. This entire generation is a disappointing mess.
I hear ya but they launched with RDNA 2, ray tracing is AMD's 1st gen implementation with dubious claims about their ray accelerators being a hardware solution, and 10tflops with 36 CU's (compared to the 6800xt's 72), the writing was on the wall during launch. Soon as we had specs, all of their claims looked like bullshit to me from the start.
I do admire their overclocking trick to compensate, and I do really enjoy their UX along with that bamf controller. They definitely pulled the right business tricks, but high framerates and ray tracing was laughable to me. Just marketing myth, and I feel you. 30fps is cringe to me and I wish consoles could get past that shit.
Yeah, I agree. Good load times, a silent console and the controller are the positive sides, most of the rest is disappointing. Same goes for the Xbox Series X, except the controller is not really an upgrade and that platform has almost zero really good exclusives. Even Game Pass, which was an amazing value deal a few years ago, has turned into a shovelware desert.
With their inability to meet demand that first year they made many of us into patient gamers. I bought a PS4 Pro for a couple hundred bucks when that frenzy was going down and will happily play through that massive catalog at 12 bucks a game as long as they still charge almost $500 for a 4-year-old console.
Good for you, IMO (and as a PS5 owner) you're not missing much.
Lower the price.
Yep, the ps2 was half the launch price by this part of the cycle.
As far as I know they already lose money selling them because they make way more money through PS plus and the PS store
Consoles never really make money.
The money is in locking consumers in your ecosystem, which is why exclusives used to be a big deal. Now they'd rather their games be available to people on other consoles since they bought up too many studios
Like, Xbox wants everyone that owns a Xbox to buy COD for Xbox. But they also can't limit it to Xbox because a bunch of ps5 people would buy it if they could. So it's better to sell thru ps5 then losing all those potential customers that will never buy an Xbox.
This is only half true. They are loss leaders early in their lifecycle, but almost (looking at you PS3) always profitable 2-3 years into production due to paying down initial costs of production and efficiencies developed during production.
and curb scalpers
I wish they did the opposite. Release a €999 PS5 Pro with specs that justify that price.
Aside from the Switch, which just quietly prints money, this generation of consoles feels like a huge failure.
The Xbox launch was so bad I couldn't tell you what the latest Xbox is called, and the PS5 had its hype during a global pandemic, and seemingly couldn't bother to release games during that period.
While the "latter stage" could basically mean 4-5 years, I don't really see what the big rush is. Let 2020-2022 be a write-off, and focus on getting some fucking games out! I have a PS5, but purely because I got it as a gift. All of my games, aside from one, are PS4 games.
Obviously, there will be some big names that'll likely come out during this time. We'll likely see a new COD game, GTA6, ideally a new GOW came, and FF7's latest part. With that being said, 2024 is extremely underwhelming for games.
I just play upscaled 4k GameCube games on Dolphin.
The wii games look amazing too! I don’t remember Super Mario Galaxy looking that good.
They've barely released any PS5 exclusive games. This feels like a massive ripoff.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sony now expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 consoles in its 2023 fiscal year ending March 31st compared to previous projections, Bloomberg reports.
In its third quarter, Sony’s gaming revenue was up 16 percent versus the same period the previous year, sitting at 1.4 trillion yen (around $9.3 billion), but operating income was down 26 percent to 86.1 billion yen (around $572 million) due to promotions in the third quarter ending on December 31st.
According to Sony, the company plans to emphasize profitability over unit sales as the console approaches its fourth birthday.
“Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” said Sony senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka in comments reported by Bloomberg.
For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.” Sony added it has no plans to release “any new major existing franchise titles” in its next fiscal year.
Later this year, Microsoft is expected to release a refreshed Xbox Series S and a disc-less Xbox Series X codenamed Brooklin with double the amount of storage as its existing model, while Nintendo is also expected to release a follow-up to its seven year-old Switch console.
The original article contains 346 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 42%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I mean probally cause the console was an utter failure, I see no diff between my ps4 to my ps5, Supply failed at launch for 3 years, the exclusives have sucked, PS Plus went up on all tiers and features for it have been a roaring dumpster fire this is without taking into concideration the UI revamp sucks. I haven't even had the urge to fire mine up since October.
This compared to the series X that while hasn't had /great/ exclusives either, has well counteracted that downside with a huge gamepass library that connects directly with PC and had the supply to keep up with demand.
Connection between PC and XBox is a feature that I didn't know I would love so much before. The family is occupying the TV, fine I could fire the same game up on the PC.
Fully agree, I didn't think I would use it much either, but the fact that you can make any game suddenly a keyboard and mouse game is a game changer. It opened up the ability to run your strategy and your RTs and your survival games using keyboard and Mouse games like Ark I can't imagine playing with a controller however I can play with my Xbox friends because the fact that I can just play Ark using keyboard and mouse while they play on their console
Why would anyone buy a PlayStation? All the games are making their way to PC now. Also the Xbox games. You can emulate the switch games.
Because we want to enjoy gaming in the couch and have no crappy hardware mess, driver and update hell. Just a box that works and can be played from cozy cushions while talking to friends next to us instead of sweat, back pain and eye strain at a desk.
If you like pc gaming that is great but it’s weird that you can’t see there are different types of gamers.
Ironically when I was at a friend who owned an Xbox One, he had to update his crap system way more often.
Oh yes I have an Xbox as well and the GAME updates are annoying as hell but the system OS itself only gets one small update maybe once a month at most. I think the convenience of a console with one box, a power cable and a hdmi cable and with the click of one button to have it up-to-date and a fixed ca 7 year lifetime with one system compared to a pc that you have to build yourself, check compatibility, install the OS, install and update graphics and other drivers with a floating generation meaning having to buy new hardware to match new games - it's just a different thing.
Some love the building and updating part of a pc though, that's great for them.
But all that requires effort. For many people, if there is an obstacle that takes away even just several minutes prior to actually playing the game, an important time window might be missed and the opportunity gone.
Also, sitting down in a dedicated space that more often than not features associations of work, an office etc. to play a game has a completely different vibe to it. You pretty much are required to switch your head space to "gaming", it becomes a thing, something serious, non-casual. Depending on your living arrangements, you're isolated from your family sitting in the living room while you're in the "office space", playing. You're not lounging on a couch since that isn't all that compatible with the input style of most games (ever found a relaxing pose operating a keyboard and mouse? For the love of god, teach me). I know PCs handle controllers just fine, but IMHO, not many games are optimized for controller usage on PC.
All that doesn't really lend itself to a lifestyle where gaming, while still being enjoyed, simply doesn't have the same goals or can even attain the same priority in life.
Let me shave off 25 minutes of my day to just relax on the couch dude, life is hard enough.
Demon Souls, Bloodborne and Last of Us (before it came to PC) for me. I use my PC connected to my TV 90% of the time but the monthly games with a PS subscription are pretty nice
Because I want to play on my couch, not at my desk. I want a system that works without me having to tweak it constantly.
The games don't usually come out on PC until a significant amount of time has passed since the console release. Not everyone wants to wait, and often those games are poorly optimized on PC.
I stopped buying games on PlayStation since I got my Steam Deck, but there are occasionally exclusives that will entice me back. The next FFVII chapter is probably going to be one such game. I played the demo last weekend and enjoyed it immensely.
Poorly optimized? They run better on PC than PlayStation. Horizon zero dawn and FF7 remake run beautifully on the steam deck. A handheld.
Not at 4K they don't, not on the Steam Deck anyway.
Yes, of course the steam deck doesn't outperform a PlayStation 5. I said the games perform excellently and look great on handheld. They are very well optimized on PC.
But your original question was not if they will play on Steam Deck, but why someone would choose to buy those games on PlayStation instead of PC. Aside from the original reasons I laid out, higher resolution is another good reason why.
As an example of when games ported to PC are not as great as PlayStation games, here's an excerpt from an article about The Last of Us Part I:
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-last-of-us-part-i-pc-vs-ps5-vs-steam-deck-performance-review
Why are you setting your resolution to 4k for a 1280x800 display?
I never said I was. The PS5 runs at that resolution. The question was asked why would anyone buy a PlayStation if the games find their way to PC. I gave reasons why someone might want to buy a game on PlayStation anyway. Higher resolution than the Steam Deck is capable of (handheld or docked) and ray tracing are good reasons why. That's in addition to the release delay and their sometimes bad performance on PC.
They make their way to pc way later and if you want to play them at their best you need a graphics card and cpu combo that would cost more than a ps5.
Demons Souls being the exception that I can think of off the top of my head.
Cause I don’t want to spend more money and (more importantly) more time to build a PC. People got shit to do.