14 DAY TRIAL // Andrew House, the chief executive officer of the PlayStation division at Sony, says that the PlayStation 4 can deliver higher overall sales during its lifetime than its predecessor as long as the company develops the platform right.
He is quoted by MCV as saying that, “It has an opportunity to significantly exceed what we’ve been able to achieve with PS3 and there’s a couple of reasons for that. One of the success stories for the business as a whole has been our ability to open up new geographies for video games over the last five years. You are seeing opportunities for new markets that we haven’t tapped into.”
Despite the fact that the PlayStation 4 has been marketed as a device targeted at gamers, the executive also believes that entertainment functionality will be important to the future of the Sony device.
Andrew House adds, “And that’s important because there will be someone who wants this as a games device, but the fact it is a great place to view BBC iPlayer, for example, gives other family members reason to use it. That is crucial in broadening what the console’s reach could be.”
So far, Sony has announced that the PlayStation 4 has sold 2.1 million units since it was launched in both North America and in Europe.
It’s unclear whether Sony can deliver enough consoles in order to significantly increase the number before the end of 2013.
The company believes that it will move about 5 million devices to players all over the world before the end of March 31.
Microsoft also wants to sell a similar number of Xbox One platforms.
Much depends on the life span of next-gen devices and some analysts believe that they will never achieve the same impressive numbers of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 because of competition from the PC and mobiles.