2014 might not be the good year we are all expecting

Jan 11, 2014 18:21 GMT  ·  By

The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 have sold well during the weeks after launch, according to both Sony and Microsoft, and the two companies believe that they will reach and pass their targets for the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2014.

The PS4 has managed to sell more than 4.2 million units and the Xbox One is over the 3 million mark worldwide.

At the same time, Killzone: Shadow Fall is reported by unofficial sources to have barely reached 1 million and launch titles for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 have failed to gain the top spots in the monthly United States or the weekly United Kingdom charts.

Even more worrying, neither Sony nor Microsoft has big releases planned for the first three months of this year and delays are possible for the other blockbusters that have already been announced.

If the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 continue to sell well, but their games do not deliver the same kind of market performance, we might be looking at a hardware generation that will fail in the long term.

Some users might buy the new devices just for their media abilities or because of the hype, but most players should be using them for games.

Low sales for launch titles means that developers have failed to deliver the kind of experiences that players actually want and, given the relatively high inertia of the industry, that we might only see a full collapse in the marketplace in about one year or more.

Sony and Microsoft have wisely sought to bring more indie games, cheaper and with more focus on innovation, to the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

But if first-party high-profile titles do not increase their own sales, we might have a year when we find out how naked the new emperors of the gaming world are.