Sony has been auctioning off some of the rare gray-schemed PlayStation 4 20th Anniversary consoles for a pretty penny. Out of the limited 12,300 units that have been made of the 20th Anniversary PS4 consoles, Sony held an auction for the No. 00001 unit. As the headline states, the unit sold for $129,000.
The Wall Street Journal has a brief recount of the auction, detailing how a Yahoo! auction for the 20th Anniversary PS4 managed to sell for a massive ¥15.135 million, which translates into $129,000.
A Sony representative dropped a comment about the auction, explaining that...
“We appreciate all who participated in the auction and are surprised at the highest bid price, which was higher than our expectations,”
There were more than 1,585 bids and bidding started off at the actual price of ¥1. There were additional auction channels also listing the rare units at over ¥100,000, but Sony went with the Yahoo! route to auction off the No. 00001 unit.
The extra press can only help bring more attention to the PlayStation brand, which is at an all time high as far as sales and recognition go. The system is sitting at 18.5 million units sold since November, 2013 and up until November, 2014 the console was laying a royal whipping down on the competition in month-to-month sales the world around. Microsoft managed to put an end to the NPD win-streak by dropping the price of the Xbox One down to $350, undercutting the PS4 by $400.
Not only did Microsoft undercut the PS4 but they also established a number of bundle deals in order to appeal to as many demographics as possible, making bundles for games like Sunset Overdrive, Madden NFL 15 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to name but a few. The bundles and the price cut enabled Microsoft to win both November and December for the sales charts in North America.
However, Sony isn't taking a two-month loss in America lying down. The company fired back with their own bundle deal that includes a free game at the $400 price-point.
The competition between Microsoft and Sony continues to heat up as we move further into the eighth generation of home console gaming.
Sony's rare 20th Anniversary edition PlayStation 4 units may not bolster up the overall install base numbers, but they're doing a fine job of expanding awareness and marketing presence thanks to things like the auctions where the rare PS4 units are selling for $129,000. A previous auction for one of the units sold for $15,000.
So long as these auctions keep happening and making massive amounts of money, it'll continue to keep Sony in the spotlight as they seek to dominate the eighth generation of console gaming. Their only hold up is the stiff stranglehold that Nintendo has on Japan and the equally stiff competition that Microsoft is now providing in North America. Of course, they still have a very sizable lead in total sales the world around with the PS4 and I'm sure Sony wants to keep it that way.
