With pre-orders pointing to a record launch, market leader Sony is counting on big-ticket exclusive games like “Spider-Man: Miles Morales” to keep the edge over its US challenger.
In Sydney, just a handful of customers were collecting their pre-ordered consoles on Thursday morning. Just how long that boom will last remains unclear, with news this week of progress on a virus vaccine prompting a gaming sector sell-off on stock markets, as investors anticipated a return to normal life.For Sony, the stakes with its new console are significantly higher than for Microsoft, as gaming generates the lion’s share of the Japanese firm’s profits and about a third of its sales.
“You’re talking about a relatively small market in Japan… driving Sony to centralise the PlayStation business in one area, and that area is the United States,” he told AFP.“I think that the PlayStation 4 was so successful that Sony has cultivated a much bigger fan base for PlayStation content,” he said.That is more than the $300 price tag for Microsoft’s less powerful Xbox Series S, which also has no disk reader.