The PS4 has been very well received by gamers. Sales have been going well, with it outselling the competition by a factor of three to one at some points. Sales have been so good that even Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida admits to not understanding how it is selling as well as it is. While it doesn’t answer all of the questions, a new Nielson report that was obtained by Re/Code does explain a little bit of what is going on.
31% of all PS4 owners surveyed owned an Xbox 360 or Wii, but did not own a Playstation 3
The survey asked 1,200 “active gamers” in the US what gaming consoles they owned. According to the report almost one-third of PS4 owners switched to the console from one of its competitors. To be specific, 31% of all PS4 owners surveyed owned an Xbox 360 or Wii, but did not own a Playstation 3. Aside from that, another 17% did not own any last generation console.
Unfortunately, due to the wording of the survey these numbers would include anyone who traded-in or sold their PS3 before the survey took place. However, it is still an impressive number, and considering the lack of backwards compatibility it is likely that most fans would keep their PS3 rather than sell it, making the survey more accurate.
The last sales number for the PS4 showed 10 million units sold through to consumers. If the survey’s ratios are true of the entire PS4 owning population, then it means that 48%, or about 4.8 million sales came from people who did not own a PS3. This is a big win for Sony who lost a lot of fans with their transition from the PS2 to the PS3. They seemed to feel at the time like consumers would simply buy the next Playstation because it was the next Playstation.
This ended up not being true though, as their price and lack of compelling games resulted in lowered sales. Eventually they turned it around, winning back a lot of their old fans with exclusives like Uncharted 2 and The Last of , but the PS4 seems to be the final piece of the puzzle in getting people back on Playstation.
Published: Aug 25, 2014 08:01 am