PS5 Is Running Riot in Europe, with Sales Up 175% Over Last Year

Switch being down makes sense. Everything else is not expected.

@TanookiLeaf @GreatKwyjibo you don't need an xbox to play Starfield, or any other xbox game for that matter.

Well done Sony but is the sales increase that suprising considering all the sales and promotions PlayStation have been running recently and the stock issues this time last year. It seems pretty obvious

Xbox sales down by nearly 30% 😬, some saviour starfield was.

Imagine the sales if Sony actually had a steady stream of exclusives, would easily outpace the ps4 sales.

My PS5 network card is playing up. In 2 minds about buying the slim or buying the fat one in black Friday sale. Or trying to wait it out for the obese one next year.

@Powerplay94 you can also stream it to a device you already own like a phone or tablet. No need for an expensive pc or console. Their business has evolved beyond console sales

@UltimateOtaku91 @TanookiLeaf It's actually interesting as it really shows that Xbox's business these days is way more about software than the consoles.
Starfield apparently sold quite well and is currently the 7th best selling game of the year in the US (with majority of the sales being on PC) and that's not counting Game Pass.

@Powerplay94 Also not many people are going to play AAA games on a mobile phone at 720p, and PC isn't as popular as consoles, there's way more console players than PC players. So if Starfield was a system seller then xbox would of shifted way more consoles. It may of sold a decent amount but that was to those already with an xbox and not to new players.

I think xbox series consoles have reached a point where anyone who wants one now has one and won't shift many more units, may even sell worse than the Xbox one which was deemed a failure even by xbox players themselves.

@UltimateOtaku91 Bethesda's main audience is on PC and always has been. Starfield sold more on PC than console

It is expected Xbox console demand would be reduced as soon as they committed to putting all their games on PC a few years ago. My worry is they continue to use the consequences of their decision to justify why they should be allowed to buy publishers. To get away with buying ABK, they touted their incompetence (under oath, no less) and their low market share. Those things are likely to continue, so it can be used as justification again in the future.

That aside, I am pleased with Sony's well-deserved, not bought success.

You'll read all the time some saying the PS5 is ugly. Out of all the 3 current consoles on the market, the PS5 is the most interesting, futuristic looking, almost like a rocket that wants to go to the moon. I dunno maybe im just talking nonsense on side paths my brain usually goes on. Basically whether you like the look of the PS5 or not, its the one that looks more intriguing and unique and that alone spikes interest in weird ways along with this so called brand momentum. DualSense being another reason, its just so good. The Switch has done super well for itself for its unique and different hybrid ways to play. Series X/S while not ugly just plain bland oblong or flat oblong

Wow, Xbox down 35% during the Starfield launch month is not so much a punch to the gut as a shotgun blast to the face. Honestly, that’s pretty worrying.

Well done Sony!

@Sakai Starfield was massively marketed, its the biggest exclusive to hit the xbox in years! For the series consoles to be down 35% after less than 3 years on the market is bad whatever way you swing it. Especially with how cheaply you can get a series s with GP(both hugely advertised).

Yes you can play it on pc, it's a huge market, but that still doesn't explain why their consoles aren't selling that well. The whole phone and tablet argument makes no sense to me. By all accounts people don't stream games like Starfield to play on phones!

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite enjoying Starfield on my X. It's just not the game of the generation/ space exploration one they were promising. Its more restrictive and has more loading screens than any game I've played in years.

@Serialsid BGS main audience is on PC and always has been, so their games were never going to be console system sellers, as the majority of their fans already play on PC. Why would you buy a Series S for Starfield if you already own a PC for their games.

They were purchased for gamepass content, as confirmed during the ABK trial

Ps5 is the 👑 king.domination.word up son

@Sakai I think it has been a bit of a system seller but this was before release rather than after. Reception to the game has been mixed and I think that has led to a slow down in console sales but for sure if you go on Reddit or the comment section on most gaming outlets there were tons of people who bought a series console before September with Starfield/Bethesda in mind.

I am speaking as one of those people who got my XSX in 2021 shortly after they made it obvious all future Bethesda titles will be exclusive. I don’t want to buy a high end PC or laptop and I have tried streaming games to phone/tablet and the quality is awful…I am, and probably always will be, a console gamer. Funnily enough I have had way more fun on my Xbox with the third party gamepass releases as Bethesdas Xbox journey so far has not been massively impressive.

@Powerplay94 yh the PS5 is to big. I have really wide open shelf under my TV with lots of breathing space all round for it sat horizontally so got a bit lucky. Be interesting to see legit side by side unboxing of this new slim next to the original PS5. The Series X/S doesn't look terrible by any means, just far to safe of a design and far less interesting in a way. The Series X does look nicer with that wrap around Starfield shell thing, I forget what it's called

@TheCollector316 That's what irks me the most, when people defend xbox by saying they don't care about console sales, they only care about gamepass, cloud gaming and getting people into their ecosystem. But why did Microsoft use their low console sales and low market share as an excuse in the courts to plead their case for the ABK deal.

Either Microsoft are liars and are deceiving the courts to get these deals done by playing the pity card, or Microsoft do actually care about console sales and want their systems to be highly successful and those saying otherwise are just using it as an excuse to defend them.

@GeeEssEff enjoy the consoles mate, happy gaming

@UltimateOtaku91 If Microsoft really cared about console sales, they wouldn't release all their games day 1 on PC and streaming. You literally don't need an xbox to play xbox games. How more obvious could it be that they have moved beyond the traditional console market lol

@Sakai

...and the reason it sells more on PC is that the Modding community can fix everything that is wrong with Starfield.

@MikeOrator they have always been a traditional PC developer for years, long before they ever released anything on any console

Important to mention that the swtich is reaching market saturation and there is anticipation for the Switch 2 to hit the market next year.

@GreatKwyjibo starfield wasn't all that ,it went from a 9 in the begining ,right down to a 6 during the later stages for me,shallow bland experience in my opinion, it was like budget skyrim ,the loading,dodgy graphics, terrible sound implementation,crappy music,and the novelty of that stupid new game plus soon wore off.

@themightyant Problem with that statement is the assumption that one game alone has ever been the defacto reason for a consoles dominance. He's right, but that's like stating the obvious, or just realizing something he should have figured out long ago.

One game however, if it does hit all the right notes can act as a catalyst for interest. It's always been that way. That can push your console by a few million units, 10m depending on the game. Get enough exclusives and enough games of exceptional cross platform quality, that catalyst becomes a chain reaction.

What Microsoft doesn't understand is how to build a catalyst into a chain reaction. They stumbled on it with the Xbox 360, but they didn't understand it. So when PS3 eventually caught up and past the xbox 360 it wasn't really a surprise to anyone. Uncharted was the PS3's catalyst, push another 5m units out the door with its release. There were other games to play as well.

No one buys a game console to play a single game, no one has done that since the 70's. It's why the push for swappable media became a thing back then and why it was a challenge to be overcome. Sony does things in waves. You'll get a couple of games or more at the start, to get the buzz, to build that interest, then you keep going each year and build this catalog. Sony has always built on the promise of an exciting catalog of exclusive titles. Xbox has never done this. They built on finish the fight and buying up gears at some point, just never maintained its brand. Buy a PS5 now you're good for a generation. Buy an xbox and you're just buying services and a bunch of tired franchises. Kind of the rep they've given themselves.

@Sakai their main audience may be on PC, but the game that was so massively hyped and advertised with their consoles front and center! It was on every single xbox website, the game of a generation. They must have spent millions on advertising.
For their sales to drop 35%, with no hardware problems during the games launch month, and with forza around the corner is awful. And in North America the PS5 outsold Xbox in September aswell. That's their home country(where they are strongest), with Sony releasing nothing until Oct.
Personally I hope they reverse this trend, I want a strong Xbox, I want 3 consoles fighting each other. Competition is better for us gamers. My worry is MS deicide the console market is not worth it, and just become a software publisher and leave hardware behind.

@Sakai Microsoft release games on PC because it makes sense for them to given that they own Windows and they still benefit from PC gamers one way or another. They aren't really moving beyond console gaming as such, they're just supporting another platform that they already own.

@Powerplay94 there’s 130 plus million “ancillary consoles” out there…for me the Switch is my main console and the other two are my side consoles. I play on the go mostly….hard to say what the next iteration will do. Might be tough to follow the success of the Switch, but if they can avoid the mistakes of the WiiU, I can see it doing quite well.

Switch slowing down is expected but Xbox dropping 35% with Starfield (and Forza)? Ouch. I think, even COD exclusivity wouldn't really move the needle for Xbox hardware in Europe.

Playstation selling as much as it does during a relatively dry first party year is crazy.

It's almost like spending years and years creating fantastic shared experiences, implementing top tier marketing, providing great games and backing other developers to put out interesting new content has created some sort of widely established, loyal user base.

How unexpected and unimaginable that they are reaping the benefits from this 😅

@Kevw2006 they are moving beyond it. They are expanding to pc, mobile, streaming, tvs etc. It all came out during the ABK trial. Remember the quote that they are competing with google, apple etc

@Serialsid the main audience is on PC, so they are not going to buy a Series s if they have a PC.

@TanookiLeaf yes that is correct. Have you not been paying attention the last few years to literally every analyst in the industry, or even all the details we found out during the ABK trial lol

@Sakai The idea that they don’t care about consoles is nonsense. If they didn’t care they wouldn’t be selling consoles at $100 loss and spending billions on R&D.

In the long run they have their eye on a broader market and want to focus on content ownership across all mediums, but in the here and now there is no better way to make a buck than getting 30% of every game sold on your platform.

@TanookiLeaf yes they are 2.5trillion dollar company because they are bad at doing business

Playstation sell consoles so they can sell software, as that is where they make the money. Its the only way they can sell software.

You don't need an xbox console to play xbox games. It is pretty obvious console sales are not their yard stick for sucess. It's a different business model.

Don't take my word for it. Just read industry analysts or Microsoft themselfs under oath during the abk trial

@Sakai The point most people are trying to make is that although Microsoft's business model may not primarily be focused on console sales they will still very much care about console sales. You don't go to the effort of spending millions to develop "the world's most powerful console", alongside a cheaper entry level alternative and not care if no one buys it. It's not something that they will admit publicaly but internally I imagine these stats won't be going down well.

@Kevw2006 there's no way for any of us to know that. All we can go off is public statements or statements under oath, which have confirmed that they do not measure their sucess based on console sales, but they do use MAU as an example

@GreatKwyjibo yeah it pretty much was spot on ,you get drawn into it early and its all quite good,then the cracks start to appear, its a step back from skyrim in many many ways ,new game plus,originally you think hey this is kind of cool ,they you realise apart from a few dialogue changes ,the game is exactly the same, but you've lost all your money,weapons and ships,people where making out it was some really big thing and encouraging people to rush through the game ,saying the game only starts proper when you finish it ,it doesn't, I went from loving it ,I played for 120hrs ,to thinking its extremely mediocre ,and to think it was being touted as a game of the year....pah...maybe in 5 years it will be something special with the mod community ,but as it is ,its a shallow mess.

@Sakai when the console isn’t selling of course they are going to say they don’t care.

Just as if it was selling they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

Regardless if you can play on a PC. Still have to admit, I’m the month their biggest game released since the series console came out, the sales have dropped. Why? Why aren’t Europeans buying it as a second console, it’s €300ish euro or so. A switch is the same price yet people buy that as a second.

Why can’t their biggest game get an uptick in sales? Even in the short term? For comparison ps5 increased sales in Japan in the lead up to FF16, then it tailed back.

@Sakai theyre not xbox games anymore they may carry the brand name ,but that is all they do ,the xbox as it was during the 360 days is dead, and has been for a long time ,ms stopped caring about it 2 years into the launch of the xbox one.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner because you need a Playstation to play FF16, and a Switch to play Mario, but you don't need an xbox to play Starfield, and Bethesdas main audience has always been on PC for decades. I hope people are finally understanding lol

@Mephisto2869 not even sure what you are talking about mate sorry

@Serialsid oh they will still have a console ,they just won't care about it ,but they certainly won't let Sony dominate the console market ,xbox studios is now game pass ,everyone knows this ,you only have to look on xbox centric sites and forums ,its all anyone talks about ,if a new game gets released you can feel the disappointment if it isn't on game pass,they will just wait in the hope that it does.

@Sakai you can go on about pc being the main market all you like. This was a game that was massively marketed as a next generation game, a game that couldn't be made on the last gen console, a game that was going to show what xbox and its consoles could do! A game that every gamer should want to play, console or pc!

At the end of the day Xbox have released 2 consoles that cost hundreds of millions to r&d, sell at a loss, because they want people to buy them to get them hooked on GP! They spent 6 billion on Bethesda, spent many millions on advertising Starfield to get people to buy their consoles.
To be in the 3rd year of your console generation and be down 35% year on year, in a market with 700 million plus people is very bad business. Maybe the Activision deal will change things around, we shall see.

@Serialsid and it was the highest selling game last month, despite being ons gamepass day 1, so the advertising worked. That's the job of marketing, to sell the game.

They spent $6 billion for gamepass content, as we found out during the abk trial

@Sakai but it didn't move consoles, which is a major part of their business. The advertising was supposed to shift consoles, the hugely expensive marketing campaign highlighting the game and their consoles together shows this!
It's interesting, during all the court drama was a leeked internal email from Spencer to the MS CEO after the ps5 reveal, that he thought they had the better hardware and software and we're in a winning position! They were bullish about initial sales and wanted to win this generation! Now all of a sudden consoles don't matter anymore! GP on console has stagnated, they've admitted this. The only way to improve that is to shift as many consoles as they can. Because most console gamers/ families will never buy a gaming pc. Starfield has failed to do this!

@UltimateOtaku91 MS would love to have better sales in the console space, it opens up more players to sub to GP. The reality is a Phil addressed this, they lost a digital generation with Xbox one vs PS4. Users are back to PS and with large collections of games both digitally and physical disks. Their freinds are there and it’s the hot item to own. There isn’t a way for everyone to just pretend it’s Xbox 360 time all over again. Not even myself and i am a Xbox fan, well Xbox controller fan, however you want to look at that. This will be a slow………. Slow build back over time. Sony is a worldwide known console brand with PS, Xbox isn’t going to take users away over night. They have to play the long game with the damage the One did after having a successful generation with 360. Truth is they may never get those users back and 50-70 million consoles might be all they can get to. So having their games in PC and mobile and cloud is smart to keep the money rolling in. In the console space PS is doing more than just fine 😊

@GreatKwyjibo

Yes. I was referring to Starfield

I just hope the lack of console sales from Xbox the main competitor doesn’t lead Sony to rest on their laurels.
I mean by now we normally have a good idea and some gameplay and release dates from a game or two from Sony AAA single player in house studio games.
Sony too quiet for my liking for 2024.
And I don’t mean 3rd party or paid exclusives from other studios.

@themightyant I still maintain MS doesn't understand this for a few reasons. If we look at their first wave of acquistions back in 99 to 2003 for the original xbox, many of these studios faultered and didn't even make it to a substantial release. They just knew they needed games, but not know idea what those games should say about their console. I think Halo's success really just dumb luck. FPS was the future the Dual Analog stick controllers were coming into their own and Bungie happened to replicate a controller layout of the one PS1 FPS game that managed to get it right. Whether they were inspired by that game or came to it on their own is its own discusion, but its really the only thing that surivived. Gears of War imo was still a panic purchase and an attempt to not have thier own Crash Bandicoot situation of a 3rd party having control of an IP that mascotted their system for nearly 10 years. Every studio they've had has either left or folded at this point. so I don't think they know how to manage these studios when they have them. To them it's product.

Their latest acquistions seem to ring to the same truth here. They've acquired multiple FPS studios for one. Maybe a good thing, maybe thats the identity of the brand their going for, but the days of the definitive FPS console are pretty much over. Which makes the acquisition of CoD baffling as successful as it is. More so baffling of failing IP like Overwatch. I think for MS that's just padding for Game Pass and not much else and their real desired acquisition was to help establish a foothold on a non-console space, namely mobile. While I can appreciate the fandom of Zenimax's studios, they haven't been without their issues in recent years. To fallout 76 to issues with Prey and the falling quality of titles like Wolfenstein and Doom which had just recently regained their glory. Say what you will about Fallout 4, it wasn't without its detractors. Acquistion of Oblivion and other studios are equally as baffling.

Maybe MS has figured out the secret sauce, but a lot of these studios seem untouched. It sounds like Activision is going to be left alone after bobby departs. I think that Phil Spencer is well aware of many classic titles like Hexen from ABK studio Raven, but they are tied up so deep in CoD that I don't ever see them separated from it. I don't see MS supplying them with the funds to grow to produce the game themselves. There will be some pissed off people at Raven if the IP they worked on is shuttled off to another studio. MS went chasing after variety without establishing a brand of quality, I feel like they are about to repeat that very same mistake. This consolidation of the industry is just going to result in a lot of new studios springing up. So maybe this is for the best as developers fund their own studios with fledgeling lesser know publishers to release their games.

@GreatKwyjibo

Yes, that would have been funny.

I have the same problem with punchlines in my head. By the time I have finished my post trying to get the joke right, it's too late and I just delete it all and move on.

One last dig at Microsoft and Bethesda.

The 2 best games that have come out from Bethesda since 2020 have been Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo and they were both Playstation-timed exclusives.

@BobaTheFett Trouble is Microsoft are not interested in software sales, they are really only interested in Game Pass subscriber numbers.

@Sakai starfields early access prob boosted sales significantly, while also making Microsoft's 'gamepass day one' claim look very shady.
Gamepass day one but you can buy it on day minus five.

@Beerheadgamer82 I guess media pundits in particular like to play out that intelectual superiority, so they usually applaud the "clean" and "unintrusive" nature of the Series X's design.

I'm a designer myself, and I think the original PS5 Digital Edition's design is marvelous, especially in the horizontal position. It's both wild and balanced, and it hovers beautifully over my cabinet's shelf. I also love the b&w contrast and the matte finish of the plates. Genius stuff, really.

Now, the new slim... I don't know what they were thinking, especially with the horrendous disc version. That drive bulge is so disproportional and the peg... jesus.

@NotSoCryptic why is it important to mention an overrated handheld vs consoles

@nomither6 you tell me why it is important to mention a hybrid console that caught up with ps4 in sales numbers and is now making way for its successor and how that could potentially slow down ps5s momentum.

You're living in the past if you think the concept of a handheld still exists.

@NotSoCryptic it’s a handheld that can connect to a tv , technology has been doing this for decades.

and the ps4 was the wii u’s competitor not the switch - not that it matters since the switch is a handheld anyway. it’s mind boggling how people think it’s a console .

@nomither6 my switch is permanently connected to the TV, I certainly consider it a console. It's a bit ridiculous to say Nintendo doesn't count because of a cool feature of the console.

@nomither6 just because your camcorder in the 90s could connect to the TV doesn't mean you get to shift gears and assume that every portable gaming device did the same. You'd look pretty silly trying to compare the experience of playing a gameboy on the TV to that of the switch, but I dare you to walk into a room of a bunch of video game nerds and make that comparison and not have them eat you alive for trying.

You know as well as I do that this simple dock changed a lot. You couldn't even just sit down with a psp3000'd and plug in the cable, then just sit with a dual shock 3 to play it. Closest we got was the psp go.

So no, your apples to oranges comparison means a whole lot of nothing in this conversation. I'm not going to beat around your opinion when over 110m users have universally accepted this as the first console to do this and do it right. Anything else said on the subject is beating a dead horse and I suggest you go read the conversations that already exist on the internet that deconstruct your point of view and defeat it.

Now as far as your opinion on the ps4s competitors. You're half right. Wii U was the ps4s competitor. However so is the switch. The switch was the successor to the wii u. Because the wii u with its 10m units sold bombed out so hard that Nintendo had to Sega Saturn the damned thing. That doesn't mean the next machine they create is a successor for next gen. Switch is antiquated hardware, Nintendo is releasing hardware next year to replace the switch. It will be a competitor to the ps5, not the ps6.

This entire conversation just sounds like you trying to cope or you really struggling with basic concepts for some misplaced desire to force conformity to a specific world view. Things have changed and you need to accept that fact. Now I personally hope the switch 2 doesn't have to large of an impact on ps5. I love the novelty of an easy to use drop in solution of base line console performance. Love my steamdeck for that reason. It's not giving me eye popping ray tracing, but it does let me play spiderman on the go. I'm one of those people getting the playstation portal as I find myself using remote play more than I thought I would at this age. So please get over your hangup, no sane person would accept your points of view as logical or reasonable.

@NotSoCryptic you typed an awful lot. didn’t really read it but

the dock literally serves as a way to connect the handheld to a television & charge the handheld & nothing more . no console needs a dock or apparatus to connect to a tv , just a simple hdmi cable .

you think the switch is a console just because it can connect to a television like many other things can . the game quality of third parties on switch is that of a handheld game and embarrassing to call a console especially in 9th generation. steam deck is more powerful than switch and is a handheld so what exempts the switch from being one ? oh right “i can dock to tv!” i think the steamdeck can play on a tv too

Interesting as this seems to be the opposite in the UK....according to Push Square sister site Pure Xbox.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/10/thanks-to-starfield-uk-xbox-sales-enjoyed-a-huge-increase-in-september

Seems Xbox had a great month in the UK

@nomither6 Dude, don't respond to me unless you're going to read what I wrote. Don't expect me to read what you wrote until you do.

@NotSoCryptic i read a bunch of fanboy jargon, like i said , literal handheld with handheld quality games

@nomither6 You've said a whole lot of nothing. No. You didn't read what I wrote if you're talking about "fanboy jargon". Do not respond to me until you've read what I wrote. Do it again and I'll just simply block you to avoid dealing with the headache of someone trying to make me dumber with each response.

@nomither6

Firstly, what did Nintendo do to hurt you? You seem very willing to die on this hill alone. How does it affect your daily life if MOST people accept that the Switch is a hybrid console/handheld that you have to make sure everyone knows your opinion on it? The way most people see it is that the Switch is a console with the added benefit of also being a handheld.

Can you imagine if you could do that with the PS5 natively without any ads or apps? Just pull the "play deck" out of the dock and continue playing your PS5 game on a 4k handheld screen.

What if the design of the Switch became the new normal for all consoles going forward? Would you still argue that the next Xbox or Playstation are hybrid devices and should not be included in console sales numbers?

@NotSoCryptic is right. The antiquated mindset of consoles being different from handhelds no longer holds any water. Nintendo changed the way most of us think about this in 2017 with the release of the Switch.

@Art_Vandelay yh agreed that sharper disc drive bulge does look wrong and out of place with the rest of its design. I suppose the sharp disc drive bulge is to do with saving a little more weight maybe. It's possible it might grow on some when they get the new slim in hands and set it up or it could look even worse?

@MikeOrator when you start off your comment like that i can’t help but think you’re choosing sides and disregarding the fact that he brought up the switch first .

@nomither6 The context by which I brought the switch up, completely invalidates the point you think you're trying to make here. I'm afraid you don't understand that fact and you decided to get all fanboy upty at me because you don't get the context. As I said, you do not read. @MikeOrator has you pinned on all accounts. I don't know if you got some bug up your butt about Nintendo and feel like they shouldn't be mentioned in a market analysis, but you completely missed the point of what I was saying and got your head lost in a quagmires of pointless ideations about what you think something is. Fact remains is that the Switch did slow the PS4's momentum down. It took less time for the Switch to reach PS4's numbers and surpass it in life time sales by a meager 3m units. My point is now the Switch is dying. New hardware is coming. That could shake the boat in what looks like an unstoppable run for the PS5.