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The story
A thread titled “Doesn’t PlayStation feel seriously washed up? What’s causing this?” popped up on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board, drawing a flood of replies about PlayStation’s fading momentum. The thread cited global hardware sales figures for July 2026 — PS5 at 784,000 units, Switch 2 at 707,000, and Xbox Series X|S at 115,000 — sparking discussion over how close the race has become. Looking at Amazon’s bestseller rankings, posters noted that PS5 software slots are dominated entirely by new releases with no older titles in sight, prompting claims of a “closed market where nothing sells unless it’s brand new.” As for the cause, opinions were all over the map — the discontinuation of physical (package) versions, insufficient anti-scalping measures at launch, and a management strategy overly focused on Western markets were all floated — with no consensus reached.
What people said
Guess PS5 takes the sales win this week then.
Which store?
Beat the Switch 2!
July worldwide hardware sales:
PS5: 784,000 units
NS2: 707,000 units
XBS: 115,000 units
Designed by Americans, actually bought by Chinese consumers — so where does that leave Japanese fans?
The PS3 and PSP just blew through all the money PS1 and PS2 earned, so it nets out to zero. All that's left is the "PlayStation" brand name.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/1560352/
Performance ranking: PS5 Pro > standard PS5 > Steam Machine
Nearly 80% of PC users are running specs below a PS5
That's the reality.
Gamers are choosing the PS5 — where they can actually play GTA6 — over poorly optimized PCs plagued by online cheaters.
Once you take blame-shifting far enough, I guess you stop being able to question whether your own brain is the problem.
The result of jumping on Sony's digital-only bandwagon: backlash over no-disc editions, leaks on top of that, a gay character reveal, and a CERO-censored, cut-down version.
At the very least, anyone playing GTA on a Japanese PS5 is just getting stuck with an unfinished product.
Then it'll easily hit a million domestically too, right?
Surely you're not going to do the embarrassing thing where the rest of the world is partying but domestically it's just endless "it's totally selling well" copium, manufacturing one last shred of hope by going "well there's still XX coming" like always? 😁
They could've at least run a commercial or two tying it in with Spider-Man.
Same thing happened with Microsoft's Forza Horizon 6 — they've got zero marketing sense.
・Onimusha
・GTA6
・Trails to Azure (Sora no Kiseki 2nd Chapter)
・Wolverine
・Ace Combat 8
・FF Resonance
Now, what do all of these have in common? That's right — every single one is an "upcoming new release." Not a single already-released game made the list, even ones that came out quite recently. This is about as clear a proof as you'll get that it's "a closed market where nothing sells except new releases, because no new customers are coming in."
What's actually impressive is that the console keeps selling a decent number every week, yet there's not a single go-to game people pick up alongside it. Then again, maybe it's just scalpers buying them.
Well, most of them are going toward military-diverted mining use, so barely any are actually selling as game consoles — that's why there's such an abnormal gap with software sales.
"Our own criteria" — the moment subjectivity enters the picture, it's got zero credibility lol
By that logic, if GAFA (Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple) put out even a single mini-game, it'd rocket straight to the top of the rankings.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The figure raised in the thread — that PS5 edged out Switch 2 by a slim margin in July’s worldwide sales — reflects the fact that competition with Nintendo’s new Switch 2 hardware is now in full swing. On the other hand, the claim of a “closed market where only new releases sell,” based on Amazon’s rankings, needs to be taken with a grain of salt: that ranking is a snapshot at a given moment based on Amazon’s own proprietary criteria, not a statistic representing actual units sold. Some posters in the thread raised this same doubt. As for the underlying cause, multiple explanations were floated side by side — pricing strategy, a management focus tilted toward Western markets, the scaling back of physical (package) releases, and insufficient anti-scalping measures at the PS5’s launch — but no single explanation won out, and opinions remained split. There were also observations that a gap exists between the official sales figures and the sense of things on the ground in stores and the market, suggesting that this discussion is ultimately rooted in a mismatch between published data and consumers’ everyday impressions.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “Doesn’t PlayStation feel seriously washed up? What’s causing this?.”
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