Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Demand for Playstation 4 is Higher then Xbox One

Playstation 4 and Xbox One launches are behind us and both consoles are reported to have sold 1 million units in the first day. With the exact same supply this is a great opportunity to look at resale prices and see which console has the greatest demand.

Econ 101 tells you supply and demand determines the price. We know the supply for both. So any difference in resale price is entirely due to demand.

Below is a chart of PS4 and Xbox One console prices before and after launch.
PS4 & Xbox One Resale Prices After Launch

Both consoles are selling for prices higher than their retail prices (PS4 $399 and Xbox One $499). Playstation 4 prices have been relatively stable in the $580-600 range. Xbox One prices dropped $50 on launch day from $700 to $650.

PS4 and Xbox One have different retail prices so adjusting the chart to show the premium people are paying helps to see the relative demand between the two.
PS4 & Xbox One Resale Price to MSRP After Launch

Playstation 4 consoles have been reselling for 150% of retail price. Xbox One was selling for 140% of retail prior to launch but prices then dropped to 130%.

Prior to launch people expected Xbox One to be harder to find then it actually was on launch day.

Any sale before launch day is based on the expectation of supply, but not the actual supply. To really compare demand between Xbox One and PS4 we need to look at prices after launch because at that point supply was the same.
PS4 & Xbox One Console Demand After Launch

The chart above shows the premium customers were paying for the two consoles with the launch days aligned and the premium paid 1, 2, 3, etc days after launch.

Since launch, consumers have been paying a higher premium for Playstation 4 consoles than Xbox One consoles. With supply being constant at 1 million units each, demand is higher for Playstation 4.

This indicates that when supply becomes readily available for both consoles Playstation 4 will sell more units.


Methodology

The prices for this study are based upon the average resale price per day on eBay.

9 comments :

Anonymous said...

Tagged for reading in 2 years to see how this pans out.

Anonymous said...

the ps4 sold out a million units in north america within 24 hours. while the xboxone sold a million units worldwide within 24 hours.

JJ Hendricks said...

@anonymous - Great point about the location of the sales. That means the demand is even stronger for PS4 than this data indicates. Supply in North America is higher than supply for Xbox One, but Playstation 4 console prices are still higher relative to retail price.

Christopher Friend said...

Hey, sorry for random comment but you're the guys to ask :o)

I just noticed eBay (at least in UK) have decided to change completed listing searches from showing up to 15 days history to up to 90 days. Which is starting to mess up my charts at igpc.inaudible.co.uk. Just thought you might know a hidden search option to change the amount of time included, to get it back to 15 days? I really don't wanna start greping the dates out, ordering prices by date, and discarding X, but I've a feeling I'm gonna have to :(

Christopher said...

Shows how much attention I've been paying to me own site :o\

It's now at www.pc.in-to.net . And looking a lot more averagy. Stupid averages.

JJ said...

@Chris - I don't know a way to change the url to see shorten the time period for searches. That is the only major problem with scraping prices instead of using an API. Website changes happen more frequently so scraping is more prone to breaking.

I hope you can find some work around.

Christopher said...

Yeah I know... but API is beyond me. In fact I probably couldn't code my site again as it is, got lazy last few years. Unless michael wants to outsource himself real cheap... :oP (actually not a bad idea I made far too much this year and tax man'll want half unless someone else takes it - so if he'd like to be funded for a UK site with a few custom additions, maybe... ).

Anyway I figured I could store all prices individually just using date/time/value as a unique indicator, turn it in to a proper timestamp and store trillions of pricepoints like you guys. But I'll probably just do it on the fly for each item while parsing, and discard anything too old, then gen averages etc as normal. Damn my coding sucks. Whatever works :o)

Travis Hendricks said...

2 years has passed, and sure enough, this article was spot on. The PS4 is more popular, and by a decent margin too. We'll done PriceCharting.

JJ said...

@Travis - Haha. Glad I got that one right. That kind of analysis is really fun. Thanks for following up and keeping me honest.

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