Complacent Sony is the worst Sony. We've seen it before and renewed success is no guarantee we won't see it again. Look at Nintendo.
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PS4/3 sales generate more revenue than XB1/360/Wii & Wii U combined
- Thread starter ZhugeEX
- Start date
Crimson_Gold
Member
I believe that all 3 are currently selling at a profit
That's certainly the narrative they put forward. If only they'd known then what they know now. Then again the same gould be said for Sega (Saturn), Nintendo (N64, Wii U), Microsoft (One) and even Sony themselves again (Vita). Hindsight's a funny thing.
lifeexpectancy
Member
Title needs update to say CY 2014 or whatever. It's clickbait. I read the title as meaning lifetime/LTD, which obviously couldn't be true based on the Wii alone (I imagine anyway, didn't do the math).
Good on PS4 for going so strong all year last year, but that title is a bit baity.
Good on PS4 for going so strong all year last year, but that title is a bit baity.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
And to think there's some people around here that want to Sony go back to taking a big loss on each console they sell. Not going to happen folks.
Not with anyone.
Not with anyone.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
what's odd about wanting that? It'd give you more bang for your money.
Also technically the revenue would be identical where that the case, so kinda irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Click bait? OP is probably just doing it for the ad revenue :s
Seriously though great graphs and I especially appreciated your Japanese figures showing the rapid decline. Thank you
PhantomVash808
Member
Nice post ZhugeEX I always enjoy reading your charts and information regarding industry sales data. Keep up the good work.
Maybe after seeing Nintendo making so money last gen, probably made both Sony and MS rethink their approaches.
No. Whenever someone buys a handheld or home system, generally, they are buying it to play games, which, in turn, requires purchasing software that ONLY that system can play. This is and will always be the case regardless if it handheld (like the 3DS and Vita) or a home console (like thePS4, XB1 and Wii U). Whereas a phone is brought primary for the purpose of communication. A phone, generally, IS NOT purchased based on it ability to play games.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Microsoft must be scratching their heads right about now puzzled on how Nintendo made any money off the Wii U.
Hidden One
Member
"Oh man...Oh man oh man...Not again"
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
What's odd is they feel it would be a smart move for Sony. Not sure how revenue would be identical when they'd be selling far less with that strategy.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Well it depends on sony's goal whether they want to obliterate their competition or dominate it. They could have priced the PS4 to be profitable with any full rrp game purchase for instance if they wanted to be aggressive with pricing for instance.
Anyways 2 scenarios
- the hypothetical PS4 is just as powerful but sold for less. If it cost for instance 350$ instead of 400$ they'd only have sell 1.25 the amount of consoles to arrive at the identical revenue they are now.
- the hypothetical PS4 costs just as much but packs more expensive hardware. They'd only have to sell as many units as the PS4 for the identical revenue.
Case 1 wouldn't happen in the first months since it sold out everywhere anyways. No idea why they'd be selling less with that approach.
serversurfer
Member
handhelds : consoles :: smartphones : computers
consoles : computers :: handhelds : smartphones
HTH <3
Basically, ~$15B was spent on console hardware last year and it interests financial analysts to know that Sony managed to collect a little over half of that. The actual number of units sold is also important, but for different reasons, so that's usually analyzed more or less separately. One of the things hardware unit sales affects greatly is the share of the software spending you'll eventually end up with, and that too is analyzed separately. Basically, market share is pretty important in financial analysis, and it's measured a lot of different ways. Hardware revenue is just one of the common slices we look at for the console business. It tells us how much of the "initial buy-in" dollars each company is attracting.
Of course, it's more complicated than that too, because this analysis doesn't include any kind of cost of revenue, like free games and TVs included with the consoles, Superbowl ads, or even the build cost of the hardware itself. So we know what they collected for their hardware, but we don't know what they spent to make that possible.
KillerMan91
Member
When you consider all R&D expenses and launch years losses WiiU probably will never be profitable as a whole (just like PS3 and original Xbox but to lesser degree). It's also really hard to estimate how much WiiU is currently contributing to Nintendos profits. 3DS is doing the heavy lifting and it's not like Nintendo is making that much money in the first place.
Nice OP Zhuge. I suppose not altogether surprising. It is scary to see how harsh the Nintendo decline is. I really do hope they don't simply retread old strategies with the new console, and can claw back some of the lost mind and market share. Though based on many of Nintendo's recent antics, I can't say I'm especially confident in them. If anything, they seem to be veering further out of touch, which is a damn shame.
What I'm interested to see now is how long Sony hold out before dropping the price on the console. Honestly a price drop is overdue.
What I'm interested to see now is how long Sony hold out before dropping the price on the console. Honestly a price drop is overdue.
The PS3's problems weren't about Sony being complacent - it was them being too ambitious and making a few wrong predictions. The PS3's main problem was that Blu-ray was too new a technology at the time to implement into the console. You can contrast the adoption times: DVD in 1995, PS2 in 2000 and Blu-ray in 2006, PS3 in 2006.sörine;176901899 said:
That's easy - they didn't and probably never will. The Wii U was a terrible mistake and the industry knows it.
So PS4?
Complacent Sony is the one that tells you to get a second job to afford their system, or that controller rumble is so last gen and who needs it?
All of these still stem from Sony having a ~$800 BOM. Complacent companies don't overstretch like that - that's the purview of overly ambitious ones.
inked_illusion
Member
Congrats Sony, get ready for the next battle
False analogy. The last time I checked handhelds ARE consoles. If you want to get really technical, smartphones, handhelds and home consoles are under the subset of "computers".
They couldn't put the rumble on PS3 initially because Microsoft was patent-trolling them for that technology, so Sony made up that excuse. Once they settled the lawsuit Dual Shock 3 was released.
serversurfer
Member
Sure, in the same sense that smartphones are general purpose computers. It's just that in the case of handhelds and smartphones, their form factors (typically) put them in a different power class and give them a different primary use case. Therefore, a handheld is as distinct from a console as a smartphone is from a "computer."
Sure, it's basically just four sub-categories of the same basic device. The classic "computer" gives you general purpose computing in place, and smartphones give you the same on the go. Consoles and handhelds are specialized versions of the same, tailored specifically for gaming.
Code:
Ultra-portable | Not so much
|-+
Smartphone | Computer | General
|-|-
Handheld | Console | Specialized
|-+
Melchiah
Member
Not necessarily in Europe, where C64 and Amiga were popular in the 8/16-bit era.
serversurfer
Member
That's actually where I did my gaming here in the U.S. during that era. I'd purchased a few console games for Genesis and SNES, but I'm pretty sure PS1 was the first console I actually owned. Oh, I had an Odyssey and an Atari 5200 back in the day too. Or maybe a 7800. One of those.
Melchiah
Member
PS1 was the first console for me as well, and it kinda felt like a logical step from Amiga, with Psygnosis onboard for one. Never even considered N64 and Saturn, as I didn't follow the gaming scene at the time, and they were pretty much non-existent to me. Whereas you'd stumble onto PS1 everywhere in 1998. Everyone I knew who played games had one.
This. The responses of "yeah then we should also include x y and z consumer electronics" are just nonsensical. Handhelds are consoles, and should be included when discussing video game hardware revenue, in my opinion. I don't see the value in drawing a line for "home consoles," but many of you do, and that's fine.
From my calculations adding the 3ds to Nintendo's numbers would net them around an additional 2-2.5 billion in revenue (based on roughly 12 million 3ds sales last year × $200). Which would put them closer to Sony and MS. And yeah, revenue isn't really all that important, profit is (hardware revenue minus hardware cost). But generally speaking, higher revenues equal higher overall profits. So congrats to Sony on it's excellent 2014. 3ds is showing it's age, and the wii u continues to struggle. I hope the NX is a great success along with the PS4.
serversurfer
Member
Yeah, earlier some guy was saying we should lump handhelds in with consoles. /shrug
Mystic_Wanderer
Member
Revenues don't mean much - it's profits that count. If I have $5 in revenue and $4 in profit that's better than $99999999999 revenue and $3 in profit (exaggerated numbers, of course).
Ding ding ding.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
What's crazy to me is that the Wii is looked back at as some sort of gaming juggernaut that just redefined the market, when in reality it didn't sell that many more units than a PS3 or Xbox 360. It absolutely was a profit generator, especially to Nintendo, but all in all I don't think it did much for the market as a whole. It certainly didn't shape the gaming economy anywhere near as bad or good as the HD twins.
Was it market saturation or lack of support that really seized the Wii's momentum?
Was it market saturation or lack of support that really seized the Wii's momentum?
Handheld = console
3ds = console according to Wikipedia, engadget, kotaku, ign, gamestop, trusted reviews, amazon, etc, etc
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Handheld = console
3ds = console according to Wikipedia, engadget, kotaku, ign, gamestop, trusted reviews, amazon, etc, etc
I agree with this, but the thread didn't specify those, so I'm not sure why people are injecting them lol.
You know Nintendo group them separately in their financials right?
Nintendo themselves call the 3DS a handheld games console and the Wii U is a static/home games console.
The article in this thread and the graph all say home console.
It's a clear difference that either you don't understand or are just trying to get attention for no reason.
I think you're to an extent ignoring how long, and more important how late, Sony and Microsoft sold the PS3 and 360 at razor-thin margins to gain market share, i.e. those Black Friday sales where you could get the 360 for $100. Those padded hardware numbers without much profit and it's unlikely those very-late-life sales added much for software.
Lionel Richie
Member
Same here, I came in expecting a gigantic mindfuck.
I understand the difference, but your op talks about Nintendo's sharp decline without taking into consideration where more than half of their hardware revenue comes from. So I guess all I'm saying is Nintendo's hardware revenue is closer to $5 billion in reality, if you remove the arbitrary distinction of "home console."
They're declining in the handheld market too though. DS -> 3DS is similar to PS2 -> PS3 level of decline.
3DS was profitable. PS3 lost around 5 billion.
It talks about Nintendo's sharp decline in home consoles.
Would you have an issue if I wrote an article saying Mercedes A class sales are way down but you interject and say that their S series sales are good though? No you wouldn't because I'm specifically talking about the A class. Just like here it's specifically talking about home consoles. How are you not getting this?
The article doesn't go into the handheld industry at all really. It doesn't discuss Sony's rapid decline in handheld sales, it doesn't discuss Nintendo's decline in handheld sales. Nor does it discuss how mobile software sales have surpassed handheld console software sales last year and handheld is set to decline into irrelevancy even further.
If you want I can create an article on the handheld industry then just ask. Don't make pointless posts in this thread saying I'm not covering handheld stuff when the whole point of this thread is to talk about home/static consoles. It's even alluded to in the title.
Not sure where you're getting that 5 billion number, but in any case it's not applicable, as I was talking about unit sales. Nintendo is becoming increasingly irrelevant with the exception of the hardcore Nintendo fan. Sure they may make a profit with the Wii U, but if they only end up selling 20 million of the things total, that'd be horrific...
Edit: BTW, love the call out to the Memory Sorrow and Thorn series if that's what your username is alluding to.
Pancakes R Us
Member
20m Wii U systems? Mate, the system is going to have trouble hitting 13 million, forget 20.
The Artisan
Member
and I think that was shipped, too.
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