For comparison, calendar year sales so far (Jan to Sep).
PS5: 10.70 million (4.50 + 2.40 + 3.80)
NSW: 6.84 million (1.96 + 2.10 + 2.62)
XBS: 2.80 million (0.80 + 0.80 + 1.20) Est.
Jeeesuz Xbox....
For reference, in its fourth calendar year, OG Xbox did 4.1 million in unit sales.
Xbox Series is in jeopardy of falling
BELOW that this calendar year, launch-aligned.
People bending over to try to paint Astrobot as a failure when its sell-out numbers to customers (1.5m in 9 weeks) managed to do almost Sonic Frontiers sell-in numbers (3.4m in 6 months) with no holiday season and no discounts (yet).
Sonic Frontiers is not only featuring a decades-old big IP, it also released on all platforms and cross-gen, Astro Bot is a much smaller IP that launched on one console only.
Astro Bot is actually a runaway success and will likely become mainstream in a few years.
Yeah; I honestly don't care about the other information (my enthusiasm for PlayStation as a platform going forward is extremely low), but I am genuinely glad to see Astro Bot is doing well. I'd suspect its budget is likely in the $50-$70 million range, considering the size of Team Asobi & the amount of time it was in development for.
Considering the market for 3D platformers hitting wider success rates is practically nonexistent unless you're Mario or Sonic, 1.5 million in 2 months for what's basically a new IP to most people is great. Only the disingenuous or ill-informed anti-exclusivity hawkers will try spinning it into a failure, mainly because they want the game on their platform of choice.
Sony makes $2.2 billion, meanwhile
Nintendo's profit plunges 69%.
Switch is nearing its 8th year on the market, with no massive software releases past FY (dunno if Jamboree counted towards last FY or not; even if it did, wouldn't have been enough to offset), and no major 3P releases i.e Hogwarts Legacy. Also Switch production winding down, so less hardware to sell.
Being down 69% is of minor concern considering the circumstances, and that what they're coming down from was a massive number anyway. Would not be surprised if their profits are still within 75%-80% of SIE's despite being down 69% YoY for the quarter.
What's interesting is the statistic of AstroBot selling to 37% new users that have not played a Sony first party game in the last two years.
This has to be encouraging to Sony, because it suggests there's a new audience of gamer that likes what they see with AstroBot but otherwise may not be a big fan of their other first party games. Just a different type of gamer that may like Nintendo content, for instance.
Hopefully this highlights to Sony that YES, it IS a good idea to go after the "AA" space that diversifies your lineup and that these smaller scale projects are a good idea to pursue even if they don't sell gangbusters like their AAA titles. Collectively it adds up to more new users and they are still individually profitable due to less budgets allocated to them.
Which is probably why we won't see much else like Astro Bot until near the end of the generation, most likely.
SIE seem to have an aversion towards doing internal AA titles. I'd even like to still hold out hope those rumors of them working with SEGA and Bandai-Namco to make new AA games based on legacy IP like Wipeout end up true, but I just can't bring myself to place any serious stock into them anymore.