Analyst: PS5 Has a Strong Chance to be the Best-Selling Console in 2023 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2023 / 4,692 Views
Piers Harding-Rolls, games industry analyst at Ampere Analysis, has released his predictions for 2023 via GamesIndustry.
He believes the PlayStation 5 has a good chance of being the best-selling console in 2023 as long as availability remains good.
"I'm expecting the console market to stabilise in 2023 following a decline in 2022," said Harding-Rolls. "The games release slate is looking really positive. If availability of PS5 holds up, it has a strong chance to be the best-selling console of 2023 with the Switch entering the later stages of its lifecycle. The upcoming Zelda will sell plenty of Switch hardware, so it could be close. I'm not expecting a next-gen Nintendo console in 2023: we have 2024 in our forecasts."
He added with the difficult economic situation he thinks the PlayStation VR2, which is set to launch on February 22, will sell between 1.2 million and 1.5 million in 2023.
"Sony's PS VR2 will enter the market during a difficult macro-economic time," he said. "I think 1.2-1.5 million sell-through in 2023 is achievable. I'm also expecting Quest 3 at the end of 2023. Overall, VR gaming will slowly grow but will remain relatively niche."
Harding-Rolls also discussed video game subscription services and expects to see significant growth for Xbox Game pass due to a strong first-party lineup.
"The biggest games subscription services missed their growth targets in 2022, but I think there is reason to be positive in 2023," he said.
"I'm expecting Game Pass to grow significantly in 2023 on the back of highly anticipated first-party games entering the service. If the ABK deal goes ahead, expect to see more mobile games in Game Pass. I'm also expecting Sony to secure more of its own third-party day one releases for PS Plus Extra and Premium and that will help drive adoption.
"Pure-play cloud gaming services will continue to be a small market opportunity compared to the wider subscription market. Most value in streamed games will be focused on services that also offer download distribution. We'll see Netflix experiment with some streaming of games for consumers."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I think we were all expecting that, unless Tears of the Kingdom somehow causes the Switch to do another year of absolutely amazing numbers.
What would we do, us, ordinary dumb people, without the observations of the analysts...We are so lucky to have them.
Einstein
I don't doubt it!
Uh, duh.
Xbox probably won't surpass PS5 in any year, and Switch is past its peak. 2023 or 2024 will probably be the peak of hardware sales for the PS5.
No if Nintendo has enough oled + New Mario
I mean... it will be in it's third year so this year or next year should be somewhat the peaking years. More console are available from easier manufacturing, games ramping in, more options for bundle. Switch the main competitor on the charts will be in it's SEVENTH year. So yes, it would be tragic for the PS5 otherwise.
Switch should be looking at around 16-17 millions this year. PS5 can achieve that
I guess even non-analysts are expecting this as a strong possibility.
Ampere is not very reliable in my experience, their data contradicts about 3 other analysts last I checked.
I guess the other analyst is a lot more reliable right?
The comment is deleted now, but the person I was replying to was talking about Ampere hardware number claims from June, he was trying to claim that the gap between PS5 and Xbox Series is larger than we believe just because Ampere said the gap was larger. So I was saying that those Ampere hardware numbers from June didn't seem to be very reliable at the time, like 3 or 4 different other sources had higher Xbox Series numbers than Ampere every time I have looked in the past, including VGChartz, and I have seen Xbox employees comment on tweets with VGC Xbox Series numbers and imply that VGC's tracking has been pretty accurate for Xbox numbers at least, which would mean that Ampere has Xbox Series undertracked.
I was not saying to discount Ampere's claim that PS5 will be the top selling console in 2023. They may be right, or the other analyst firm that says Xbox Series may sell the most in 2023 may be right. Or maybe Switch can surprise us and stay in the lead one last year. We'll just have to wait and see. The market is in flux and anything can happen, analysts can always be wrong, Pachter made a career out of proving that.
Understood. I would say your comment on the other thread is more right to the point when saying that it doesn't matter much what Ampere showed for 2022 as that doesn't give certainty for 2023 anyway (even if past is a good indicator for future it isn't deterministic).
