Sony's head of worldwide studios for PlayStation, Shuhei Yoshida, admitted that PlayStation 4's success was an unexpected surprise for Sony.
More precisely, Yoshida explained that the number of PlayStation 4 consoles in the hands of consumers exceeded Sony's optimistic estimates by around 2 million units. "We had a specific target," said Yoshida. "5 million units - against what we did, 7 million I think, and it just kept going. We had more modest projections before the launch."
This unexpected success forced Sony to reevaluate its plans to dedicate more resources to support both the PS4 and the PlayStation Network. The unexpected rapid increase in PlayStation 4 sales also affected the launch plans of first party titles such as DriveClub.
"DriveClub has sustained its momentum," explained Yoshida. "They needed to spend time to really rewrite the server-side of the game. We weren't expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4, and have PlayStation Plus membership."
"Because the title was originally titled for the launch of the system, the number of potential people to download for free for the PS Plus version would be much smaller than two years after the launch. We realised the daunting task of supporting potentially millions and millions of people to download and play. The team needed to go back to the drawing board and re-engineer the server-side."
While PlayStation 4 enjoyed better-than-expected launch, Xbox One performed far less than expected. In hindsight, the difference can be traced to a single mistake made by Microsoft during Xbox One launch: the decision to bundle Kinect with the console and price it $100 above PlayStation 4. Microsoft wagered that the motion tracking system would have been its differentiating factor, but in the end it didn't provide enough value for hardcore gamers to justify the price difference.
