Sony Has Sold 10 Million PS5 Consoles (engadget.com) 30
The PlayStation 5 just crossed a significant milestone. Sony has revealed that it has sold 10 million PS5 consoles as of July 18th, eight months after the system's November 12th debut. From a report: The company considered that no mean feat between the pandemic and ongoing chip shortages that reportedly held sales back. It's now Sony's fastest-selling console to date, outpacing the PS4 by nearly a month. Sales have slowed down since launch. Sony racked up 4.5 million PS5 sales in 2020, but sold 3.3 million in the first quarter of 2021 -- it took another four months to add 2.2 million to the tally. That's not surprising between supply constraints and the usual mid-year slump, but you might not see sales climb until the holidays. PlayStation chief Jim Ryan told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview that it was "too early to tell" which markets were the hottest given widespread demand, but pointed out that China was a pleasant surprise. The company sold out its PS5 launch stock "very, very quickly" despite a local market focused on mobile games and the free-to-play model.
haven't seen one yet (Score:5, Insightful)
they will make it to PS6 before I can even buy a PS5
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Seriously! I even have one and I haven't seen them live in the wild since I got mine back in late November.
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Blame the crypto miners.
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Won't be selling one to me, I'm done with Sony's bullshit. Next console is a Steamdeck. Hardware wise it's all Ryzen/Radeon anyway. Nobody needs that proprietary Sony/Microsoft crapware layer.
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"As soon as I held it myself the layout felt completely natural" [youtube.com] Reviewer feedback good so far. Size isn't that different from Switch, but order of magnitude more powerful. Price not out of line at all, I don't know what you're comparing to. Runs nearly the entire Steam library. With that who gives a fuck about exclusives. Compatible with your normal gaming PC is enough.
Where? (Score:2)
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Scalpers. I haven't seen one from a legitimate store yet, but scalpers always seem to have one. I'd rather let them keep that inventory forever.
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Thank you for your entry in the 'Most Meaningless Comparison' contest.
Buy lots of games, too (Score:2)
Can you really say "Sales have slowed down"? (Score:2)
The summary says "sales have slowed down' but that seem an inaccurate way to phrase what is really "sappy of new consoles has gone down", since any time a PS5 is up for sale they are gone in well under a minutes. Sales rates are as brisk as they possibly can be with no abatement, it's only supply that is the issue currently.
To who? (Score:3)
I've never seen the PS5 actually be in stock. Whenever new stock comes in, it sells out in literal seconds.
Yet this stock isn't making it to gamers. It's unclear how many of them are being used to play games and how many are simply sitting in scalpers' garages, hoping that they can make a quick buck off selling them back at inflated prices. (And these inflated prices are starting to come down - used to be they'd easily go for double, now they're only going for 150% above MSRP.)
Sony doesn't care, though, because it gets them stories like this. They know that the reason for the continued demand is the continued lack of supply. There are essentially no games for it right now. I can think of a full two games that are PS5 exclusives that are not available anywhere else, and one of them is the controller demo that shows off the new controller features. There's no compelling reason to buy a PS5 right now, and Sony knows it.
Except that if you do get a chance to buy one, and don't immediately grab it, you may not be able to get a chance for who knows how long. That's the only thing that's boosting demand right now.
If Sony cared about getting consoles into the hands of gamers, they have an easy method of doing so: PSN accounts. Limit sales to PSN accounts that actually play PlayStation games and did so before the PS5 launch, and you'll cut off access to scalpers while letting people who intend to use the consoles access to them. (OK, there are caveats, but if you limit to one per account and shipping address, most scalpers aren't going to have a batch of PSN accounts to use to send to different shipping addresses.) But they're not doing that. Instead they're releasing random amounts at random times in random markets, pretty much guaranteeing that the scalper bots find them before any actual person interested in using the console does.
But it does get them impressive sales figures. And that's all they care about.
Not sitting in garages long... (Score:1)
Yet this stock isn't making it to gamers. It's unclear how many of them are being used to play games and how many are simply sitting in scalpers' garages
I don't think many people realize how rapidly the PS5 is sold by the average scalper.
Just take a look at PS5 sold listings on eBay [ebay.com]. First page of results, all from today. Not sure how long that carries on.
I have a friend (seriously not me) who has a cousin (also not me) that is the epitome of the evil bot reseller dude, he buys something like 40 PS5 conso
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This is pretty easy to do, if you have no ethics. Just find that one guy who works electronics in Target, Best Buy, and other major franchises, and offer him $200 every time he lets you know ahead of time when stock comes in early enough for you to purchase four or more units. Make five or
It's web change plugins being used (Score:1)
This is pretty easy to do, if you have no ethics. Just find that one guy who works electronics in Target, Best Buy, and other major franchises, and offer him $200 every time he lets you know ahead of time
I agree that some people are probably doing this, however the guy I know of incidentally said he uses a web page change detector plugin for Chrome to detect new stock and just jumps on it... I think in conjunction with bots that make multiple purchases under different accounts at once when sales open, that'
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It sells out online in seconds. I got mine recently and I got it by happening across Best Buy's website at the right time. But Best Buy wasn't selling them online - they were selling them in-store. In-store pickup makes it a lot harder on scalpers because they can't buy 50 of time in a single transaction - given the stores are doing 1 per customer or household, picking up 50 units is much harder. So instead of selling out in seconds, it can take an hour or more.
And Sony does care, as does Microsoft. They do
Re: To who? (Score:3)
There are essentially no games for it right now. I can think of a full two games that are PS5 exclusives that are not available anywhere else, and one of them is the controller demo that shows off the new controller features. There's no compelling reason to buy a PS5 right now, and Sony knows it.
It's ridiculously quiet. It plays PS4 and PS5 games with almost no fan noise, versus previous generation consoles that sound like jet turbines spooling up. Many PS4 games have received PS5 specific updates, and games that had variable frame rates are just silky smooth now.
The mic built into every controller is actually convenient. Most strangers don't talk in online games, and probably a good deal of them never hook up mics just on an off chance they feel like talking to a team of strangers, but now _eve
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Looking at the update for GT Sport it's interesting to compare the PS4 and PS5 versions. The PS5 version is 60 FPS in some places where the PS4 is 30, and the level of detail in far away objects seems to be a bit higher.
But somehow it looks less realistic. I don't know if maybe the rendering output of the PS5 GPU is a bit different but the trees look pasted on now, something about the edges of them that blend in better on the PS4. Also the PS4 was 30 fps in exterior replay shots which made it look like TV,
Lame (Score:2)
The Sega Saturn sold almost 10 million as well and that was considered (rightfully) a flop.
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"In total" vs "so far".
That's the nice thing about China (Score:2)
The company sold out its PS5 launch stock "very, very quickly" despite a local market focused on mobile games and the free-to-play model.
You have a small, fringe market of people interested in console gaming, but that, in China, is still like a hundred million persons.
Sad to say, but scalpers have most of them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony knows how many people have activated their PS5. Barring a small number of people who will keep their PS5 permanently offline, the vast vast vast majority of PS5 owners who intend to play with the system will set it up, and will connect it to the Internet where Sony gets to note the unit coming online.
Scalpers obviously don't do this.
So Sony knows the fraction of PS5s sold that are in the hands of people playing with it. And if it was a significant number, you know they would announce it.
Like for example, they sold 10M PS5s, and they have noted that 9M of them are activated. If that was the case where most PS5s are in the hands of gamers and not of scalpers, then you know Sony would publish that fact because Sony knows scalping is a problem.
The fact they're not publishing this statistic shows it's probably a low percentage - maybe 50% or lower.
If we take sales of two PS5 exclusive games, like Ratchet and Clank, which sold 1.1M copies, or Returnal, selling around 500K copies, it shows. These are the few PS5 exclusives out now, and they're good games, and their numbers are pathetic for a console that sold 10M units.
Microsoft has the same problem - and their statistics are just as good (since it has to be activated online, they know every unit that comes online).
And it's got to be worrying Microsoft because their premier franchise, Halo, is going to have a major release this holiday season. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of tuning went into the PC and Xbox One versions as those sales would be carrying the franchise along. And Microsoft will report a combined PC + Xbox One + Xbox Series sales figure, because they know the sales figure for the Xbox Series will suck given how many units are in scalper's hands.
Both companies know the fraction of units that are going into the hands of people who intend to use the system versus scalpers. It's high enough to be worrying - because both are dealing with extremely low attach rates (scalpers don't buy games), and both don't want franchises to "flop" because even though they sold a ton of consoles, few made it into the hands of gamers, so few people will actually buy the title.
And both know if the fraction was big enough to matter, they'd be publishing it all over the place.
(Incidentally, stores allowing in-store reservation and pickup are seeing that the PS5s do not sell out instantly. Turns out when scalpers can't buy 100 of them in a single try and have to actually pick up the units in person, they don't actually go quite so quickly. I've seen PS5s hang around for a couple of hours - buying 10 of them at once is a lot harder when actual employees are going to be enforcing the "1 per customer" rule).
So if you want one, don't bother with companies that do online sales only. Go with the ones you can pick up in store.
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Scalpers obviously don't do this.
Scalpers obviously also offload these things as fast as possible, they don't hoard them or store them, they sell them as quickly as possible. These are not in the hands of scalpers, that makes absolutely ZERO sense.
So Sony knows the fraction of PS5s sold that are in the hands of people playing with it. And if it was a significant number, you know they would announce it.
Why? When do companies ever do that? They always report sales.
Like for example, they sold 10M PS5s, and they have noted that 9M of them are activated. If that was the case where most PS5s are in the hands of gamers and not of scalpers, then you know Sony would publish that fact because Sony knows scalping is a problem.
Yes scalping is a problem, but I think you're confusing scalping with hoarding. You think people are hoarding consoles and not using them but also not selling them, there's no evidence of that whatsoever and it makes no sense.
The fact they're not publishing this statistic shows it's probably a low percentage - maybe 50% or lower.
On what b
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Sony knows how many people have activated their PS5.
And they quote monthly active users in the reports [gamesindustry.biz] from their investor day. In March 2021 the monthly active user count was 8.6 million which, even when you account for the fact that this is PS5 users rather than unique consoles, is very high such that it even exceeds the number of consoles they had sold up until that point.
Scalpers obviously don't do this.
So Sony knows the fraction of PS5s sold that are in the hands of people playing with it. And if it was a significant number, you know they would announce it.
Scalpers aren't filling warehouses with millions of unsold PS5s that are just dropping in value as production ramps up and demand starts to slow. Scalpers want to turn them over for the
10 million sold, ... (Score:2)