Analyst: Xbox to Narrow PlayStation's Lead in 2023 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2023 / 13,669 Views
Karol Severin, the entertainment media and tech analyst at Midia Research, has released his predictions for 2023 via GamesIndustry.
Severin believes Xbox will "significantly narrow" the gap with PlayStation in 2023 due to Microsoft's hardware-agnostic efforts and its focus to provide value for money.
"The adverse macroeconomic climate couples well with Xbox's cross-platform and hardware-agnostic efforts, as well as with its focus to provide value for money and mitigate the requirement for consumers to part with large sums of money at once," said Severin.
"The combination of these dynamics mean Xbox is better positioned to thrive in a recessionary environment than PlayStation. As a result, Xbox will significantly narrow the gap in terms of console ownership and usage in 2023."
He added, "The effects of inflation and tightening disposable will be in full swing in 2023. Consumers will be looking to do two key things: decrease overall spending and/or increase value for money from their purchases. Traditionally, gaming had high entry-costs due to expensive games dedicated hardware and high price points for individual games. Furthermore, though gamers have been aging, gaming is not yet as equally distributed among age groups, as video or music. Therefore when it comes to household savings, games spend will be an immediate potential target to cut for the subsegment of non-gaming older parents (budget holders of younger gamers).
"In 2023, games companies will thus have to navigate the tall order of increasing value for money, while keeping entry costs flat, or ideally lower. Traditional unit sales-dependent business models will struggle in this macroeconomic weather. However, a number of games industry players are well positioned to thrive in these conditions."
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 I need to get a job in analytics stuff. Sounds easy. 2 articles, one saying PS5 will be biggest seller and one saying Xbox will close the gap.. so therefore will be the bigger seller.
All I can think is. "Thanks for letting us know."
I assumed he was referring to the weekly gap.
Xbox has been doing great so far this gen, but to "significantly narrow the gap in terms of console ownership and usage" they'd have to actually outsell the PS5 next year... significantly. I don't see it. Of course if we're talking purely market share it's a slighly different story but to have a "significant" effect on the overall market share they'd still have to at least match PS sales in 2023... Which again I don't see.
Time will tell but for now I think it's more likely the gap will endure or increase with the PS5 seeing it's first truly great year as production rates improve.
The one way I could see it happening would be if Microsoft continues to aggressively price the Series S and/or do impressive Series S bundles. If the recession starts to bite harder, then that could make a big difference.
That'd be especially true if aggressive Series S pricing/bundling started to make inroads into markets like India where consoles haven't traditionally sold well, or markets like Brazil where consoles sell well but where consumers are extremely price sensitive.
There’s no chance Xbox will outsell PS5 this year, and probably not any year of the generation. But I could see Starfield increasing Xbox sales even on a long term basis as it will clearly be an ”event” game. On the other hand Digital Edition PS5s should start being available this year which should also open it to a new audience.
Yeah, if digital edition PS5s become more broadly available, that will help. That said, the price increase on the digital edition (outside the US.), paired with the fact that it's usually only found in bundled form, has made the digital edition quite a bit more expensive than the Series S in many territories, which will mitigate the advantage.
I doubt it. Xbox is certainly looking better in 2023 than last year. Xbox has like 8 1st party games releasing next year with most of those planned for the first half. We still dont know what their 2nd half will look like besides a port of AOE4. It will certainly be Xbox's strongest year so far. With that said, I expect Xbox to do great next year but the Ps5 will put up excellent numbers too. I do think Xbox has the superior lineup of games compared to PS5, but the PS5 still has some big games next year like Spiderman 2 and FF16 that will push hardware. I expect the Series X|S to have its best sales year yet so my estimate is 12-14 million while Ps5 will be 20-23 million.
I really don’t see the gap narrowing at all in 2023, in fact the opposite is likely to happen with all the momentum Sony has going for it. Jim Ryan already stated that the PS5 shortages in Asia were pretty much over and done with and recent Japan sales help support that. CFO Hiroki Totoki also stated that Sony is aiming to sell at least 23M or more PS5’s in the next fiscal year. Tom Henderson is even betting more on the 30M target he’s been talking about in recent months with the possible new sku in Q3 with detachable disc drive. Has Xbox even sold more than 15M consoles in a single year in its entire existence?
With FF16 in June (FF7R part 2 possible in late 2023 as well), Spiderman 2 locked in for Fall 23 and marketing agreements in certain 3rd party games Sony is going to have a great year. Of course we could do the inevitable list wars of how many games each platform has coming from 1st/2nd party or in general for the year but comparing to Sony’s quality is a tall mountain to climb. The gap will likely grow in 2023.
lol completely delusional
Should be a difficult task, because Xbox wasn't able to outsell PS5 in the US despite the 250 $ offer of Series S.
This year Sony will release PSVR2 and a new PS5 with a detachable disc reader.
All these steps will boost sales of PS5.
If we are discussing a percentage decrease in the gap, then yes it would be very possible. If were discussing actual hardware count gap decrease, then no.
very unlikely sony will send about 20 milliones of ps5 next year maybe even more and may have the release of ps5 slim.
I really doubt it, the gap between Xbox and PlayStation 5, might grow less quickly, but Xbox actually selling more units than PS5 in 2023 is not very likely. PlayStation will also release Spiderman 2 right before the holidays.
3months later and!
Seems contrary to what I am expectg. We are seeing the PS5 stretch its lead over the Series now that the stock issues are easing. I would only expect this to continue next year.
I don't see it happening. I see Xbox systems in the stores all the time. If a PS5 hits the shelf, it's gone really fast.
I don't actually see this happening, seems like a Patcher analysis coming from an alter-ego.
The Only way to do it is if MS sells more Xbox consoles than Sony's PS5 in 2023.
TBH, does anybody think it will happen??
Seems like a couple users believe it.
It’s very interesting, it’s like they were/are very bad at math.
I can see Sony selling 20 million units easily, anyone can say that for the first 10 months of 2022, PS5 sales were lacklustre, they will improve a lot WW.
Assuming supply issues are behind both of them going forward, and both Xbox and Playstation get out Starfield and Spiderman 2 this year, this will be our first real year to actually digest sales and see where the trend takes us at the end of next year.
With system sellers like Starfield releasing in 2023 day 1 on Game Pass, not to mention the slew of huge 3rd party Game Pass deals we currently know about, I can see Xbox narrowing the gap some, but it will take several years of consistency before Xbox actually narrows the gap.
Also, how can Xbox narrow the gap if we don't even know how much Xbox Series has sold? lol
No it won't if Starfield comes out this year that will give XBOX a boost other than that good luck.
Only way I see this happening is if Game Pass keeps getting good games, and the public is more aware of it.
Even though Xbox looks" so far" to be on par with PS5 exclusive games this year 2023, being on par with games won't cause a closing of the hardware gap.
Big Budget games on Game Pass is on only chance Xbox has to close the gap this year.
And Maybe when The Activision/Blizzard Deal gets passed, maybe many will be exited by that, and make an early change to get more Xbox's.....?
I could see them narrowing the gap on a month-on-month basis, but in terms of total sales, the PS5 will still come out comfortably ahead and widen the gap in overall units sold. The PS5 may or may not outsell the XS by as much, but it will outsell the XS.
The bigger question here is, "Does it matter?"
great news for Microsoft, lets wait and see if it happens.
According to the latest Ampere Analysis, the gap between the number of PS5 and Xbox consoles sold is bigger than we initially thought. The popular analysis firm estimates that Sony has sold 21 million PS5 units (21.7 million), while Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S is at 13.8 million units sold
this data is from June.
What does Ampere Analysis data back in June have to do with this 2023 prediction?
Ps5 is still the most desirable toy...
Everyone is killing it just to get a ps5...
Xbox is just an afterthought.
