While Shuhei Yoshida may not completely understand why the PlayStation 4 is such a huge success with 10 million units sold so far, PlayStation President Andrew House told MCV that “the killer apps are important, but again that range of content has proved to be what people have been looking for.”
House offered up another reason for the PS4 doing so well so early, which has to do with the pent-up demand from such a lengthy generation of consoles with the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii:
There was also, and I must confess I don’t have a great handle on this, a sense of really strong in-built pent-up demand that surprised us. I remember talking to one of the publishers before launch, and they were saying that there was this demand very firmly. You are obviously wary of wandering into that very optimistic view of the world, but it certainly proved to be the case. It was a very long life-cycle gap.
Of course, you also have to look at the competition, and as House pointed out, the Wii U’s poor performance left the casual audience wide open:
And the other thing is that the shift in the dynamic has been the performance of the Wii U. Certainly when I look at Europe, that more casual and family audience has gravitated towards our platform. Whereas, when you think about the previous generation, they found a different destination.
Sony UK MD Fergal Gara was also asked why he thinks the PS4 is doing so well, replying, “First of all, I think we created a great machine and positioned it very well upfront. That all went fantastically, and the gaming community remember that. It wasn’t quite the same for others and therefore we got off to a great start.”
Why do you think the PS4 has been so successful?
