During Sony’s Tokyo Game Show, before the press conference, President Andrew House announced an estimate of 5 millions sales targeted for the PS4. The company now plans to ship up to five million PS4 units before the end of fiscal year in March.
During an interview with Weekly ASCII Plus, house explained the reason behind that lofty estimate
“At Gamescom in Europe in August we announced that at that time we had received over one million preorders. We achieved a very significant milestone. Afterwards the positive interest from the users continued to grow, so we set a large goal.
We made such a positive assessment because the hardware is 10 times as powerful as the PS3, but it still has an affordable price. Because of that, it has received a very positive reaction in the American market that is sensitive to pricing.
Another point is that PS4 is a full fledged multi-functional entertainment device out of the box. When the PS3 was originally released it allowed to enjoy the latest games and Blu-ray media, but it was very much limited to games. This time you can enjoy an outstanding and responsive UI and the variety of entertainment services of the PlayStation Network and the like from the get go. Because of this we think that we can increase the market share greatly from an early stage.”
He also talked about Gaikai. Gaikai’s cloud service will make a debut in North America early next year. As he mentioned, a beta may be on the way to experience before it fully launch.
“Probably at the beginning we’ll operate it as a beta test. The actual titles and the methods of purchase are still being planned at this stage.”
The PlayStation 4 will launch November 15 in North America , Europe on November 29th and Japan on February 22nd .