Instead of having a head to head race with Xbox One, Sony's PlayStation 4 ran circles around Microsoft's console and sold more than 10 million units in its first 9 months in market. Interestingly, Sony is too surprised with its console's success; it doesn't really understand how it got there.
The 10m sell through in the first nine months is well beyond what we had hoped for," admitted Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida. "It's just beyond our imagination. We are so happy. But I for one am a bit nervous because we do not completely understand what's happening."
"You need to understand why your products are selling well so you can plan for the future, right?," he added. "It defied the conventional thinking. Lots of people thought the dedicated game hardware might not be needed going forward, but still lots of people are very excited. When you see the new games coming out and being announced this E3 and Gamescom, I think there's a good enough reason for a gamer to believe this is something worth investing in."
After securing its place with hardcore gamers, Sony's eyes are now set on the rest of the society.
Well, yeah. I don't know. As soon as we see a great sales number, our instinct tells us we should be concerned about future sales, right? Are we exhausting all the core gamers? If we sell this number of units, there are no more consumers we can sell to," explained Yoshida. "That's a really terrifying prospect. So we want to understand who are these consumers who we do not necessarily consider core gamers, who are purchasing PS4 and why they are doing it and what they are doing with PS4, so we can create a bit more of a positive future, rather than saying, wow, we have sold to every single core gamer. So that's what we are doing."
