Putting PS4’s Million Sales in Perspective

We investigate how PS4's million sales compare to other launches, and what it means for gaming.

Sony shared the news over the weekend that in the space of 24 hours, over a million PS4s were sold in North America, putting Sony well on track for the most successful games console launch in recent history, if not all time. Comparing it to other console launches reveals that the games industry is playing in a whole new league now than it was at the dawn of the last console generation. It’s greatly encouraging news – and not just for Sony.
We knew this might happen, of course. Both the PS4 and Xbox One shattered pre-order records on Amazon over E3 week, and pre-orders came to “nearly two times that of all video game sales on Black Friday last year [2012]”. After such a long wait we were more than ready for new consoles, and as the first one on the market the PS4 has doubtless benefited from our eagerness. But amidst wider concern over the state of the whole traditional games industry, which has been transformed by competition from social games and smartphones over the past four or five years, PS4’s first-day sales come as welcome reassurance.

What’s especially impressive is that those million PS4s were sold just in North America. Other consoles have come close to a million in the first week, but those have almost always launched in multiple territories, usually including Japan and the UK. The Wii – which, up until now, was the fastest-selling console – sold over 1 million in its first few days, but that was across the world. Europeans bought 325k in the first two days, Japanese gamers bought 370,000, and 600,000 Wiis were sold in the US in the first week (of which most will have been in the first few days, we can assume).

Had PS4 launched in Europe and Japan on the same day, that number could have been much, much higher.

If the PS4 fails to claim the fastest-selling console title, or loses it to Microsoft this week, then this will be why. Had PS4 launched in Europe and Japan on the same day, that number could have been much, much higher, but naturally manufacturing constraints would have meant there wouldn’t be enough consoles on shelves to satisfy demand. We’ll have a clearer picture of PS4’s launch sales after the first month, by which point it will have launched in most territories and we’ll know whether stock shortages or even hardware malfunctions have had an impact.
Nonetheless, the first-day figure tells us a lot. Comparing the PS4 launch to others in recent history makes it clear just how much the gaming audience has expanded in the past 8 years. It would seem, from this evidence, that the demand for gaming consoles has never been higher, at least amongst early adopters. The PS3 launched with an insane price tag and a distinct absence of gamer goodwill, two things that the PS4 has on its side this time around, and sold 197,000 units in its first week on sale in the US. That is a ridiculously gigantic difference. Based on that number, the PS4 may well have sold 10 times what the PS3 did on its first day. The Xbox 360, meanwhile, sold 326,000 in its first two weeks when it launched.
The Wii U fared better at launch than any previous console except the Wii, selling 3.06 million units globally in its first month and 425,000 in the US in its first week. That means that PS4 outdid Wii U’s US first-week sales in less than half a day. Obviously we’ll have to wait a while for the first-month figure for a direct comparison, but the difference will be vast.

Naturally, it’s important to remember that the six months after a console’s launch can prove much more indicative of its longer-term fortunes than the first month. January to June next year will be an important period for both the PS4 and the Xbox One. You only have to look at the Wii U after its pretty successful launch to see the importance of momentum. Its sales dropped off dramatically after Christmas last year; only 850,000 more consoles have been sold since, according to Nintendo’s latest financial results. Given Sony and Microsoft’s much higher level of developer support, though, as well as all of Spring 2014’s gigantic releases like Titanfall, Destiny, Infamous and Watch Dogs, that’s massively unlikely to happen to either PS4 or Xbox One.

What will it take for Microsoft to do better?

Looking outside the games world, the comparisons are admittedly less favourable. Apple sold 9 million new iPhones in a weekend a couple of months ago, which makes a million PS4’s look a smidge less impressive. It’ll be interesting to see whether PS4 can outstrip Kinect, which briefly stole Apple’s record as the fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever, having sold 8 million in 60 days. It’s not exactly a console launch, but it’s the closest thing we had during those long years between the PS3 and Wii U.
What will it take for Microsoft to do better? A more global launch will help, as European gamers will contribute hundreds of thousands of sales to those first-day sales, but I know more than a few people here in the UK who are holding onto their money for another week until the PS4 launches on the 29th. Meanwhile, many countries will still have to wait until 2014. Ubisoft hinted that PS4 pre-orders were outpacing the Xbox One, but pre-orders can only tell us so much.

Sony is hoping to sell 5 million PS4s by the end of March, Jack Tretton has said. On this evidence that’s actually looking quite probable. EA COO Peter Moore reckoned that between them, PS4 and Xbox would sell 10 million by April 2014 – but who’ll have the lion’s share?
We won’t know who’s really ahead until both consoles have launched everywhere, and that’s many months away yet. But the US is Xbox’s heartland, and the PS4’s success there means a lot. For Sony to outstrip Microsoft in first-day sales in Xbox’s strongest territory would be a significant early victory. If you’d asked me in February, I wouldn’t have said it could happen – but even for those of us who’ve followed gaming closely for a decade or more, this year has been full of surprises.