Bettors’ forecast: The new PlayStation 5 console will achieve record sales
This week, on 12 November, Sony is launching the long-awaited next-generation PlayStation 5 console worldwide. The company has set the ambitious goal of selling more than 100 million units of the new console, surpassing the performance of its predecessor and that of its competitors. Given the enormous demand for the PS5 console during the pre-order period, “Betsafe” bettors forecast that sales will exceed 1.25 million units within the first 24 hours of its official release. In addition, the new console’s games are expected to account for 45.2 billion US dollars of the global video game market, worth 159.3 billion US dollars, in 2020.
Citing recent comments by Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan, the company plans to sell more than 7.6 million PS5 units in the less than five months remaining until the end of the fiscal year on 31 March 2021, vastly surpassing the performance of its predecessor, the PS4, which exceeded 100 million units sold only six years after its release. Analysts claim that achieving this goal will depend on the PS5’s success in the United States, where it faces fierce competition from Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X console, which went on sale on 10 November. Significantly, sales of the previous-generation PS4 console considerably exceeded the performance of its main competitors, the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. Moreover, all four previous PlayStation consoles rank among the ten best-selling consoles of all time.
Experts claim that the performance of next-generation consoles will be determined by exclusive games, services and the various approaches publishers use to appeal to consumers. As in previous years, Sony’s greatest success factor will be its series of PlayStation exclusive games, which the new Xbox consoles will not have. PlayStation 5 is also expected to dominate the eSports industry in the coming years, which would undoubtedly boost sales. It is believed that the PlayStation 5 is moving into a “completely different dimension” compared with other game consoles, and industry analysts forecast that PS5 will soon become the “terminator” of the gaming industry, bringing the long-running console war to an end.
“As the coronavirus pandemic has significantly increased demand for video games and consoles, it has also made it more difficult to manufacture them physically. And despite the fact that PS5 consoles will be available for purchase online only this week, and only in part of the world, they are expected to sell out at record speed, especially because consumers are currently spending on home entertainment the money they had previously set aside for planned holiday trips. The actual sales results will become clear only after several months, but it is already evident that such high figures will be achieved in the video game market for the first time,” comments “Betsafe” forecasting expert Valters Rozmanis.
Without any prior announcement, PS5 pre-orders began as early as the end of September, and the new consoles sold out within just a few minutes. Sony claims that in the United States it received as many PS5 pre-orders during the first 12 hours as it had received for the PS4 during its first 12 weeks. In Japan, meanwhile, the PS5 will not be available at all on its release date, as the initial stock had already sold out in advance. Console sales on the day of its release could be affected only by Sony’s decision not to hold launch-day events or sell the PS5 in stores, due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus and in order to ensure the safety of customers, retailers and employees. Instead, an unprecedented number of consoles sold online is expected.
