With 1 million units sold on Day 1, PS4 is probably the biggest console launch of all time
I’ve been one of those people to say “consoles are dead”. I’ve even thought at some point that I was right. With increasing fragmentation (steam, PC gaming, mobile games, Ouya…), and the apparently unstoppable demise of Nintendo, it was clear to me that “dedicated gaming machines” was a thing of the past.
Of course, I’m still excited by the PS4 (and I managed to get one) and, to some extent, the Xbox One, but I believed I was one of the few “hardcore gamers” still interested in those.
I was wrong
Sony announced today that they sold 1 million PS4s in the US in the very first day of the console. Now, let’s put these numbers in perspective though, as I’m sure they mean they have sold 1million units since the console became available for preorder months ago. Even though, that’s a pretty impressive number here, as we can compare to other console launches in the past.
PS4 has sold through over 1 million units within 24 hours of the launch in North America!!! 😀
— Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp) November 17, 2013
Assuming we regroup these 1 million units in one day (which the Playstation marketing staff hasn’t hesitated to do), the PS4 is by far the biggest console launch in history, with the Sega Dreamcast coming second with 500’000 units sold in the US in 2 weeks. Arguably, the PS2 was possibly as big as the PS4, but if we look only at the US numbers, the 1 million units of the PS4 just makes the PS2’s “500k sold in the US in one weekend” almost ridiculous.
How about the previous generation? The PS3 had sold about 200’000 units in two weeks in the US, and the Xbox 360 326’000 over the same amount of time. The PS4 sold in one day in the US basically twice as much as the PS3 and the Xbox 360 in 2 weeks…
These numbers are just impressive. Again, they are “biased” because the consoles have been available for preorder for a while, and it also probably means Sony improved their manufacturing efficiency (by having the consoles made in China instead of Japan, it seems they have avoided the shortage of stock that had plagued both the PS2 and the PS3), but even though, this is a huge amount for the very first day of the console.
It’s worth mentioning though that a huge start does not necessarily mean a long term success. The Wii U outperformed the Xbox360 and the PS3 in terms of “first week sales”, with 400k units sold, yet I’m having a hard time seeing the Wii U compete against the two giants in the years to come.
Let’s see how the Xbox One will perform!
xbox1 is doomed.
Wii u will be fine for the years to come
Yeah, playing those unrealistic nintendo exclusives.
The PS4 (heck, even the xbone) have better hardware than the Wii U.
heck, the last gen (ps3 & 360) almost have that hardware. The only thing off on the ps3 side is the amount of ram :p
Who cares about hardware?
3DS has worse hardware than vita and it’s 1000 times better than it just because it has better games
If you care so much about hardware buy a PC
either way, the better system will be the one with better games.
I have both vita and 3ds and i can say i still prefer vita much more. just give me ninja gaiden, killzone, uncharted, dragons crown, muramasa… dont get me wrong, 3ds has some really fun games and i love it but vita is just better, simple as that. And now with ps4 remote play will be even more epic.
I have a PSVita (with ~40 games) and a 3DS (With ~10 games). I play 3DS maybe once a month, to catch up on my Ocarina of Time game, or play a level of Starfox64 3D, but I don’t play that much. I whip out my NDS more often to play Pokémon Heart Gold than my 3DS in general.
My PSVita is pretty much permanently attached to my hands (when there isn’t my Nexus7 or PS3 controller in them). The fact we get the PS+ games is the cherry on top. The PSN is much more complete than the Nintendo Online thing…
Friend Codes? *** is up with that?
Why do I have to buy Ninja Gaiden (NES) twice?
Why do I have to buy the same game once on my Wii and once on my 3DS?
Why can’t I have an account that logs my purchases?
Why does the 3DS ask me my age every time I open the store?
Why do I have to re-purchase a 3DS/Wii VC game if I delete it from the internal memory?
Why doesn’t 3DS have an indie-developer program like PlaystationMobile?
These are the questions that make me feel that Nintendo has dropped the ball of late.
*** yourself. The only thing Nintendo does is release sequels to games that were conceived well over 20 years ago. Zelda, Metroid, Mario Bros, Pokemon… Been there, done that.
They just did the same thing as the Wii: They took last gen’s hardware and added a fancy controller. Sony and Microsoft are at least trying to make things better. Hardware emprovements allow for better immersion into the game. As Sony showed off, they new GPU allow for billions of calculations per second to re-model characters and environment to have a realistic feel. They can now create dynamically-crafted emotions on characters’ faces, details that a player can notice himself instead of having an on-screen text saying “This person is obviously slying”, you can notice with the body language.
Also, the latest Mario games were a real bore. Even Mario Party 9 isn’t as good as Mario Party 8.
TN-V4 😀
Yes but first the ninja release with the exploit 🙂
How is that relevant…?
I really hope this kick starts waves of support for the vita
I terms of consoles sold in the US at launch the Xbox has no chance, because MS are sending less consoles out to the stores then Sony. But because they are also launching in Europe and other territories they may sell more consoles the 22th then Sony did the 15th.
I don’t understand why don’t u give a full review of PS4
Hmm, for starters, because only one of our bloggers has one yet.
Hopefully it’s a working version: http://corruptedcartridge.com/ps4-sabotaged-news/
:3 i would agree with you Wololo… I like the PS4 design than the previous consoles… it looks futuristic and most of all unique
I have mines but i still haven’t opened it yet…could there be some potential bugs,glitches that can be exploited?
im going to try and hold off on opening my ps4 till something is found.
Have fun waiting for years and years and years and possibly never.
you must not of heard that 4 ps4 titles were fully dumped and surfaced on torrent sites.also c4eva has already successfully dumped a full xbox 1 title cod ghost and is awaiting his xbox 1 for his next project.
The games are being dumped by hacked ps3’s. Playing the dumped images is a whole other kettle of fish. Just open it and enjoy, most times hacks are for all firmwares to the one hack is announced at then the one after is generally patched, and sometimes its released because its patched.
The fact that it’s one of the cheapest consoles on release probably helped push it’s sales quite a bit. Coupled with an increase in gamers recently and the fairly weak competition, the PS4 was set up for success right from the start.
Hmph. whatever.
Congrats to Sony…I had one preordered but canceled when Watch_Dogs and DriveClub got pushed. I decided to wait out the inevitable teething issues every console has at launch, but I’ll be there to purchase on 3/21/14 when the Infamous Second Son bundle is available. I will certainly miss Killzone and Resogun, but I’ve got a decent backlog of Ps3 and to a lesser extent 360 gaming to work through. I’m really looking forward to Infamous, Destiny, The Division, The Witcher 3, MGSV, The Order:1886, Watch_Dogs, and now Uncharted. I’m wondering what Sony’s other stellar first party devs are working on and I’m certain there will be many other amazing games that will be added to that list of killers soon enough.
I probably wont have one unless I buy a broken unit and repair it. I am saving up for the PC I want to build.
Nope, still staying and playing my PS2. When the PS3 gets down to 100 Euros, I’ll MAYBE buy it. Nothing comes close to what the PS2 was.
I am amazed at how small the PS4 is and how fast the interface is. The PS4 could have been about 33% smaller if they put the power supply on the outside. I don’t care for the Parallelogram design as it partly blocks the USB ports making several of my USB Flash Drives not fit and therefore I can’t use them with the PS4 without an extension.
Once the PS4 gets a few system updates to include features that should have been there to begin with like playing Audio CDs and 3d Blu-Ray Movies. My first CD player was a PSX, my first DVD player was a PS2, my first 3D/Blu-Ray player was a PS3. If Sony really wants to overthrow Microsoft, they need to include basic features that have been present in the PS3.
Fantastic !
And how many do work correctly ?
I will wait the next hardware update, the games are not worth it yet.
Can we talk about the ps vita’s hack now? how is it going??:)
thers vitacontroller for mobile assistent
thers pspcontroller for the psp emu under said exploit
and thers vjoy the vita keyboard pc server setup
whats needed is a vita hack , another psp usermode hack ?
a kmode extender for those usermodes
a kmode exploit
and a ps3 blurtooth server so that vita keyboard isnt only for pc’s ?.?
am i making any sense ?
lets wait out for total noobs tnv IV kmode thing
for a vita hack …
can this be verfied ?
can one run a buffer sploit in mobile assistent ?
what about somesorta psplink for mobile developer program ?
with $epc and $ra gdb debugger ofc 🙂
what about the vita as a bluetooth sixaxis for ps3 and pc etc …
cheers
what about the vita as a bluetooth sixaxis for ps3 and pc etc …
cheers
That is what i really wanted
Oh wait i can’t connect it to pc anyway (no bluetooth)
USB support maybe
@PSPcfwDUDE in denial much? But I know what you mean ps2 was %$#@ awesome!
Now for an update – ok so they say it takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong so here goes… aw *** I can’t do it. no I’m still mad about the way the Vita situation was handled but…I just watches a YouTube video with the remote play feature and I have to say it rocked! so maybe there was a master plan by sony after all.
P. S. I still think it’s ugly though. Looks like a giant black toaster. 😛
Personally I love that design.
Another thing to consider is that the PS4 is, what, $400? The PS3 launched with a price tag of, IIRC, $600-$700. Without even factoring in inflation, that’s a whole chunk of change more.
Plus, I remember being really ticked at Kaz Hirai’s attitude of “you should work a second job to pay for the PS3, if you think it’s too expensive.”
depending on where you bought, you made out pretty nicely, too.
• from Sony = $10 PSN voucher, 1-month PS+ & Music Unlimited (before you scoff, they didn’t NEED to give away anything)
• from Amazon = $30 off Kindle Fire HD code just for pre-ordering a PS4, buy 2 PS4 games get 1-free plus get $5 credit per PS4 title ($15) toward their Sony/Amazon download center of digital-only games and DLC.
(plus i had $70 in Amazon promotional credits from buying select PS3 titles, being my PS4 cost down to $329)
it was a great experience for me.
“Assuming we regroup these 1 million units in one day” – were there any pre-orders that were actually allowed to collect the cost/sale until the units were shipped, or released into customers hands after midnite on the 14th? As far as I know most pre-orders just collected either a token amount or even only a credit card number up until the sale was final, thus ‘regrouping’ most of the sales into the launch week (of which some bailed on at the last minute, too.)
I wait for a long time！ TN4！I give up。
Games makes consoles a success. Ps4 selling that much in one day does only one thing, ensures that third parties will make games for it. But as it stands, Ps4 is looking like PsVita when it comes to games available. But, unlike PsVita, the Ps4 has a higher install base so we should see plenty of good titles come out for it. And Ps4 and XbOne will get all the third party games that go to 360 and Ps3 in the years they will keep those systems alive. Which will make some ppl skeptical about getting one (like, “Why should I get Ps4 or XbOne when my Ps3 and/or 360 works perfectly fine and gets the same games?”). Third party games rule the console space, not exclusives (despite what ppl think). And third parties are going to milk last gen as long as they can because it has the highest install base and will for awhile.
But this is what makes the PS4 so attractive. If you soly look at the Xbox, you are perfectly right. There are some good Xbox exclusives, but the sheer number of studios and capabilies to make frequent games is just not there, plus they are just shooters and racing games. But if you look at the PS ecosystem, they have enough studios (in the west, europe and japan) to fill two platforms (PSP/Vita and PS3/PS4) with enough tripple A games with a large variety of adult and children content, shooters, racing games, and very unique experimental games to have a major releases almost every month, while there are only about two major releases on the Xbox every year or so.
That’s why people trust in the Playstation.
So would a true (or close) calculation (give a tolerance for on-day sales) would be from when the console started pre-order to day of release.
My crystal ball tells me, that the Xbox One will aso have good numbers, especially because it launches “worldwide” at the same day and the reason why people buy so many PS4s is the same as it will be for the Xbox, because of the long generation and the desire to get some graphical jump anytime soon.
But my crystal ball also tells me, those numbers will still not be as high as the PS4s and shortly after that, the Xbox ones numbers will be rendered meaningless when the PS4 launches in europe and asia.
But well, last time my crystal ball was pretty out of tune and instead of showing me the direct future it showed me the end of the last generation, so I don’t know if it works correctly now.
Jeezes, what a Bias Hype. The Wii outsold the ps4 in a months time and total sales. Sony & MS are just trying to deceive you by the pre orders; they had the biggest day 1 launch (pre-orders)…and that’s when a steep fall off in sales happened.
Don’t let yourselves be fooled people, like the poster of this articles has been.