Q&A: PS4 By the Numbers

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Q&A: PS4 By the Numbers

PlayStation 4

Though the slimmer, lighter PS Vita — and its upcoming North American release — was squarely in the spotlight of this week’s PlayStation Showcase, PS4 wasn’t left behind. Today, I caught up with Sony Computer Entertainment America Marketing Vice President John Koller for a status check on PS4’s global rollout – an especially relevant topic, with the Japanese PS4 debut less than two weeks away.

PlayStation.Blog: Can you share any updates on PS4’s global sell-through?
John Koller: The response has been fantastic. In the US, PS4 was #1 in sales for next-gen consoles in January, nearly doubling the nearest next-gen competitor. And PS4 remains the cumulative leader here based on today’s report from the NPD Group.

Globally, we announced last month that we’ve sold through more than 4.2 million units as of the holiday season, making PS4’s launch the biggest in console gaming history. I think the PS4 demand is indicative of how we’ve tapped into something special – and that’s that gamers want to be recognized for their greatness and want to enjoy experiences together.

We’re looking forward to what 2014 has to offer, starting with inFAMOUS Second Son next month, Destiny in the fall and The Order 1886 later in the year . There will be lots more games to come too – more than 100 total in North America this year.

PSB: How’s the PS4 supply chain holding up to demand, especially with the Japanese launch in just a few weeks?
JK: Since we launched on November 15th, we’ve sold every PS4 available in the US. It’s clear that PS4 is seeing strong appeal all over the world, and we’ll continue doing our best to provide additional inventory in all of the 53 countries where PS4 is available. We’ve got supply refreshing throughout the channel regularly, so I encourage everyone to check in with their local retailers regularly.
PSB: How are PS4 owners taking to PlayStation Plus?
JK: I’ve been a bit taken aback by the explosion of PlayStation Plus memberships, where we’ve seen more than 90% growth since PS4’s launch. Instant Game Collection is a big hit, with gamers sharing their experiences across Resogun, Contrast, Don’t Starve and now Outlast. PS Plus members are not only discovering great games on PS4, they’re also playing together online, logging a total of 172 million hours. It’s a great start, we’re delighted, but clearly we’ll continue to work on making PlayStation Plus the best value in gaming.

Engagement for PS4 is through the roof in general, though. More than 90 percent of PS4s in the US are connected online already. PS4 is clearly helping to define a broader cultural shift centered on social connections and sharing.

We’ve tapped into something special here with PS4 – and while it’s easy to look at the incredible topline demand, the engagement numbers are equally revealing. This is the beginning of something big.

PSB: How about the Share button? Are players embracing livestreaming, video capture and image sharing of gameplay?
JK: What people love about playing games are all of the great moments you experience; that’s what you remember long after you’ve played through a title. During PS4’s development, we knew we wanted to take that a step further by connecting players socially and emotionally, which is why we made it easy for gamers to celebritize themselves with Live from PlayStation. Livestreaming has really picked up steam, with 1.7 million gameplay broadcasts via Twitch and Ustream globally. Overall, the DualShock 4’s Share button is certainly getting a lot of action. More than 48 million “shares” have been captured globally, including millions of videos and photos shared via Facebook and Twitter, which proves that the desire to show off your accomplishments has become a cherished and regular behavior in gaming.
PSB: Exporting gameplay videos is a promising feature, but the editing process is currently a bit limited. Down the road, will there be more ways to add post-production to PS4 Share videos?
JK: We’re just scratching the surface of the potential of PS4. We know that there’s a lot we can do to expand the available toolset for editing, but I don’t have anything specific to announce right now. We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the system and are seriously evaluating various areas of enhancement for PS4.
PSB: On that note, PS4’s latest software update 1.6 brought long-awaited official headset compatibility. Do you have a sense of features that might be included in an upcoming update and approximately when they might happen?
JK: Nothing to share for now, but I can say that we are listening carefully to feedback from our fans. But on the headset point, I do hope that PS4 gamers are enjoying the new Gold Headset. It was developed specifically to emphasize the audio that developers place in their games – and because it’s from PlayStation, gamers know that this is how their games were meant to sound.

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184 Comments

4 Author Replies

  • Duck boy and prime boy you two can leave complainers along period. You idiots always try to bully anyone that has a complaint on anything on here. You’ll whine and rant at them like you Mr know it all and suppose to stop them from saying the truth to vent what they want to vent on here. Many others read this blog but never post cause they know people like you will belittle their complaints. That isn’t me… Never has been… I will voice my complaint and throw your fanboy attacks at me back in your face every time. People that complain in here complain for a reason. Its not always a troll like you try to make them out to be or you’ll whine how their trying to convert people to xbox lol. Are you guys that pathetic huh? Man its pathetic. People complain and you need to just mind your own business. Has nothing to do with your fan boy b u t t anyways. We don’t care for your sony defending on everything sony related. Just shut up!

  • I love how I get. Message in my inbox from the that little turd gamerzlimited of how he’s going to break my vita over my head lmao. Bring it on little man. Please bring it on. You’ll be begging for your sissy republicans to save you from me. Better get those sissy military to have yo back son. Stupid idiot has no idea what he’s dealing with. Morons! You and prime are a joke! Such big mouths over a blog and in person you all would piss your pants standing face to face against me. Better bring your guns you’ll need them as all republicans can’t defend theirselves like MEN without their guns lol. Fist to fist is too manly to these idiots. Bring it gamerzlimited BRING IT LITTLE MAN. Gonna send me attack messages well you better live up to it son. Idiots!

  • NOT_SO_SLICK on February 16th, 2014 at 2:21 pm said: “Blah blah blah blah blah….”

    Ha ha… you’re just mad that I made you feel stupid after you bragged about your UNIMPRESSIVE trophy collection.

    And I took a peek at your profile… Whoa! Congratulations on getting the platinum for EyePet! I’m sure that was a grueling experience! What a skilled gamer you are!

    By the way, ever heard of paragraphs?

  • Here we go again with prime trying to make attacks on people. That eye pet was testing out the ps3 camera little man. I can say I have platinums in every format other than ps4 since I am waiting till I buy another one for a while. It sucks for now. I have plats on vita and ps3, from racers, to shooters, to ps camera game platinums you name it. I have variety son and you have a junk personality little man. Do you have the starhawk platinum? Not a easy plat and until you can earn that. I’d shut up if I were you. I mostly play racers as Im a skilled racer type gamer and pretty much half my plats are from racing games and lets see you plat truck raced in less than 3 days as I have. Only 80 of us have plats on that game. Not many has platinum it in less than 3 days such as I did. Oh and thanks for checking out my profile. I seem to get under your skin so bad you need to check up on me lmao. Hows it feel being my b***h? lol. You haven’t owned anything you harassing little turd. Face to face I’d shut you up so bad!

  • I looked at your profile because I knew you were full of $#!%, bragging about how good you are.

    You’re not that good. I’m not impressed.

  • Is Drive Club going to be out this Feb2014?? i’m board of Need for Speed now! “”zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”” cheers :))

  • i’ve never had screen tear ever so there mr prick sorry i ment mr slick!

  • I never got on here saying how I think Im the best as you do. You put those words in my mouth prime so knock your crap off. Duckie saying his platinums were better than mine and I replied to his dumb assumption and compared my 12 plats to his 9. I have more plats with less trophies than him. You come along having to put your nose in peoples business where it doesn’t belong as always. Oh and you wanna mention my eye pet plat I got while having fun testing out that camera with my kids is funny. At least I got that plat and you don’t, you jealous? lol. Matter a fact all my plats you don’t have. You wanna make fun of my eye pet plat I had fun getting playing it along with my kids years ago and one of your plats is Dyad? Wow such a master plat huh hotshot lol. Plats as jeopardy or kids games that you have plat a lot of and you wanna make fun of eye pet. At least it was hard to plat eye pet having to deal with a glitchy ps3 camera. That was no easy task believe me. Not everyone plats that game thats played it by the way. So at least I have ps3 eye platinum and you don’t. Jealous? lol. Go plat a nascar game or dirt game.

  • Lets see how good a racing gamer you really are and go plat truck racer that just came on psn a few weeks ago. I plat that in less than 3 days tops. Only 80 people in the world platinum that game and I”m one of them. Did it in less than 3 days to. Lets see you do that. Then talk yo junk! I’ve almost plat GT6 and GT5 to. You don’t have those plats.

  • I challenge Prime boy to platinum STARHAWK faster than I did or platinum at all. My money says he can’t platinum Starhawk at all. Not a easy platinum to get either by the way.

  • I’m not impressed with your platinums either prime boy. Most of them are kids games.

  • Damn… I’ve never seen someone put their foot in their mouth so many times in one post before.

    Truck Racer Platinum – 50.84%, Common. Hee hee hee… you’re such a goofball, slick.

    If you want to know how good I am at racing games, just look at my profile, goof. Many of my platinums are from racing games.

    Also, Dyad was not easy to platinum. Why don’t you try? I guarantee you will fail.

    I don’t have any kids’ games either. I don’t know where you got that from. Making stuff up isn’t going to help.

  • Platinum:

    Primero – 28
    Slick – 12

    Gold:

    Primero – 214
    Slick – 106

    Silver:

    Primero – 780
    Slick – 393

    Rare Trophies:

    Primero – 436
    Slick – 146

    Very Rare Trophies:

    Primero – 227
    Slick – 33

    Ultra Rare Trophies:

    Primero – 165
    Slick -18

    Average Completion:

    Primero – 68.77%
    Slick – 29.8%

    Average Game Rank:

    Primero – A
    Slick – D

    And the funny thing is that I don’t even care about trophy comparisons. I’m only doing this to throw it back in your face.

    So, are we done here? It’s obvious you’ve lost. And I’ve got better things to do. Bye.

  • slick
    im not really impressed with most ppls platt lvls. im actually more impressed with a gamer with 4 platts that took them 2 months to get a particular platt, with over 3000 trophies & is modest about it: than some1 with 2600 trophies &12 platts, took 15 hrs of game time to plat out a game, &says hes 1 of like 15 ppl in the world to get a particular platt that they have…
    the particular games uve mentioned that u platted out most ppl dnt have or not really interested in playing those games im not…
    with u saying that ur 1 of only 80 ppl in the world has a particular trophy it either says 1 of 3 things:
    1) its an impossible trophy that it would take most ppl months to get.
    2) the game is bran new & ppl havent played through it yet
    3) the game sux & no1 wants to play that particular game

    most of the time i play the games the 10-50 (online @ any given time [130 friends on my psn acc]). & differs from day to day. when my rl friends wander over they like gaming i let them play through there own game file some of the games i let them have them run the game how ever they feel how they want to play it, with a few of the game still sealed on my psn acc.

  • prime where do i end up in the trophies

  • Dude has issues … Many of us have spent big money on our gaming so you spent $3000 good for you … It doesn’t mean sony is your b #%?” … And you have some right to harass and insult people on the blog being a total D bag to everyone … Makes me wonder about how you were raised … The way you spam the blog and others with your hateful garbage … Just like others in this world your unhappy & you want others to be just as unhappy you are in your life … After all misery loves company … Just know I really do find it to be amusing :o)

  • Please give us youtube app, it’s a bit embarrassing to not be able to watch youtube on a console when you can do on a 10 year old laptop

  • I want to put my own thought in here about the ps4 controller. Its amazing but if there could be an update that lets you toggle with the light bar and turn it off when you want like when the camera isn’t connected, now would that make the battery last allot longer? its cool in all but not everyone uses it. i sometimes do but other times i don’t.
    Hope to get a reply. :D

  • All I can do is laugh at you 3 idiots. You guys enjoying that hotel room together since you 3 up each others b u t t 24/7 on here harassing complainers. Im laughing at YOU idiots. Prime its funny how you make that up lol. You drawing up stats of your own now lol. 28 plats means you need to get outside more lol.

  • The 3 stooges… Prime, ducky boy and infidel lmao.

  • I didn’t make up anything. Making up crap is your style, not mine. All the stats I posted came directly from psnprofiles(dot)com. The proof of your inferiority is right there, plain as day for all to see. Don’t get mad. It’s not my fault that you’re inferior.

    28 plats with a higher completion rate and fewer games played just means I’m better than you. That’s all. :)

  • slick…
    if ur going to TRY to insult some1 its proper to spell there name right
    DUCKY – – is the little animal & ive met a few ducky’s in psn 2 of them hens who r on my friends list
    DUCKIE – – is the name & my friends inline & rl spell it right. & im a DRAKE

    slick ur trophies mean very little or nothing if u have platts of games that 4 out of 80 (u prob have 15) ppl on ur friends list play & 1 or 2 of them R ur alternative accounts dosent mean much to any1. u platted / 100% the game — here’s a cookie now shut-up about it. i have 9 platts which over half the ppl on my friends have played the game or 100% themself (i have 131 friends who i game with). try platting out a triple A game like COD ghost or madden 25 not a 2GB game that ne1 could find the shortcuts to.. or 100% in 4 days

    infamouse 2 & beyond two souls took me 13 days to complete
    FO3 & AC2 took bout 6 months
    Skyrim took bout 300 hrs of game play

  • the truck racer game ur gloating about is only 10 hrs. heres an interesting concept try platting a 50+ hr, triple A game that 90 % of ur 100+ friends R also playing & trying to platt out. & try to be 1 of the 1st 100 ppl in the world to get it platted out when the trophy guide comes up complete in in ps3trophies theres a decent % of the gamers who platted it without a second or 3rd account theres ways to piggyback co-op trophies out off line (in private games)

  • LoL slick you better hope your wife & kids stick around… who else is gonna put up with your S@!* and listen to your BS :o) … Don’t F that up

  • HI i made my PSN account in Portugal and now im living in UK, and a friend of mine here told that he tried to get PS+ and it doesnt let him (his account was made in Portugal too) buy it or get it, so how can i get PS+ or money to get it?

  • When is it able to Share on youtube like on twitch?

  • First of all, to everyone complaining about features that need to be added, if the PS3 can do all these things, is it that difficult to power up your PS3 instead if you wish to use those features? I use my PS3 way more than my PS4 right now, but it’s early in the PS4 life cycle. Do I think the PS4 shouldn’t have these features? Of course not. IMO, however, I think that anyone who got rid of their PS3 at this time was foolish. There’s plenty of life in it. So many good games to come and I still have a backlog of games that I wish to keep around and enjoy in the years to come, don’t you? No one made you get rid of your PS3. If you had to sell it in order to afford a PS4, then you should have done your research and WAITED to get one. I guess having to be the cool kid on the block has it’s consequences. If you still have your PS3 and are complaining, then you’re just LAZY. Get off your a$$ and power up the PS3. PS3 features will come in time to PS4.

  • What I would like to see is improvements to the PS4 UI. Being able to pause downloads is something others have mentioned and is something I really miss on PS4. I’d also like to be able to group my content as I see fit. Having the “Library” is nice, but let me organize it. Is there a way to delete content, specifically screenshots, I save with the share button? I haven’t figured it out, so if not, I’d like to be able to do so.

    It’s things like this I’d like to see ironed out as new firmware updates bring us closer to including all those other missing bells and whistles. A couple years from now when my PS3 is collecting dust, I’d hope all those features would be available on my PS4, but until that day comes, I’ll gladly support use of both systems in my living room.

  • Sid can you plz fill me in on this plz what im waiting for is more voice control gestures and mp3 accessibility plz respond pllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllz ……………………………..ps4 is still the beast in gaming but yes plz respond : )

  • Netflix app with DD5.1 soud
    Pause and resume downloads / updates
    Throphy sort list (name, date, last, etc)
    Share button still record ONLY FIRST 15min (to me and some pals)
    Automatic change / detect USB Headset and pulig-in DS4 headset

  • Please nobody talk to slick. It was tiresome scrolling through blocks of nonsense. Really is not worth it guys.

  • So I want to know when are we going to be able to use a capture card to record footage for lets plays and what not. Come on this is taking forever

  • Any possibility to get Skype on PS4?

  • Dear Sony I have some ideas for your next ps4 firmware update. First of all let sub accounts use the share button because it would increase the number of players sharing their greatness. Please add mp3 support and let us play it background while us players play games. How about let’s us sharing our great moments on PSN itself and YouTube.
    Let’s us customize the background of the playstation dynamic menu. How about give us a notification of when our friends are online or offline the same thing on the ps3. Please let’s oraginize our games on the menu like a folder on ps vita. The suspend feature needs to be added. And finally external hard drive support, I know you keep your success up and you’re lazy you’re brilliant everyone that works for Sony. I’m just a fellow gamer giving you ideas and respect. Keep up the awesome work Sony!!!!:)

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