First Quarter Console Sales: Sony Finally Catches Up

[Pingieking]

I like going head to head with analysts.

I'm going to put my money on 360 out-selling PS3 on the back of Natal, based purely on how the general public will see it. That's not to say I think Natal is the better tech for games. I think Natal is damned impressive, as a gadget. But I think the Move will ultimately make for better games. But BUT, I think the public will respond to Natal the way they responded to the Wii, and the Move less so.

I want to agree, but I am just not quite as convinced. Everything I've seen about the Move just screams "Wii HD" to me, but that's still better than Natal which looks buggy, slow, and not a great control scheme. I still think that Natal will win the Natal vs Move battle, since Sony has not idea how to launch hardware at all and Natal just looks cool. However, everything I've seen/heard about Natal up to this point (with only about 6 months to release) suggests that Natal isn't nearly as precise, accurate, fast, and overall effective as MS makes it out to be.

But even if Natal is total shit (which it probably won't be), it won't self destruct nearly as bad as the Move will. But then again, Move isn't Sony's ace card for this generation, while Natal is for MS.

 

[Narcogen]

It's interesting to note that the figures they are talking about-- market share-- refer to current sales, not installed base.

The Xbox 360 launched nearly five years ago, in November of 2005. The PlayStation 3 and Wii launched a year later, in September and November of 2006 respectively.

Nearly four years later, monthly sales figures for the PS3 have just now reached parity with the Wii and the Xbox 360. That means that until this point, most months the installed bases of the other two consoles were still growing faster than the PS3's was. The PS3 could be said to have been catching up in terms of monthly sales, but in terms of installed base, only falling behind more slowly.

If things were to stay like they are (unlikely, of course) the installed bases of each console wouldn't change relative to each other: Wii in first place, Xbox 360 in second, PlayStation 3 in third. As long as sales remain at parity this is what would happen.

Even if PS3 sales continue their growth and surpass the sales of its competitors from here on, if the rate of increase does not change radically, one might assume that it could take anywhere from one year to as long again (four years) before the higher PS3 sales translate into an actual advantage in installed base-- which might be another four years from now, making the PS3 and the Wii eight years old and the Xbox 360 nine years old.

If one admits that at least for MS and Sony, the real money is made on games and accessories, then the important figures are installed base over time, since the more people own your console and the longer they own it produces more opportunities for sales of games. If, for instance, Sony's worldwide installed base were to surpass the Xbox 360 and then the Wii in the same year the next generation is launched-- or indeed, perhaps any date no earlier than one to four years before the next generation launch-- the victory might well be called pyrrhic. If Sony keeps its worldwide installed base advantage for only a small percentage of the lifetime of the generation, then it incurs little or no advantage.

After sales market share of console units, the next important thing to look at will be when AAA cross-platform titles generally reach parity between Sony's platform and Microsoft's. (There are few titles that span all 3 consoles this generation and I'm not entirely sure there's an equal competition for those sales even where they do.)

One can only speculate what the situation now would be like if the Wii had a more extensive third party development ecosystem (as the 360 has) or if the Xbox 360 had not been plagued with terrible hardware reliability problems.

It's definitely good news for Sony, but with a lot of qualifiers.

 

[DigitalSushi]

Someone once mentioned whether the 360 sales are accurate, do they include the people who have had to buy multiple consoles due to RRoD and failures? Technically that's still only one household with one purchased. Just got me thinking that's all

I believe that could have been me, I bang that drum quite a bit.

All my friends have bought multiple PS2's and Xbox360's due to the failure rate, they have several games for the systems so they are "locked in" to buying an additional unit to shut the kids up. One friend bought 7 PS2's during its lifetime and he only saw his kids very two weeks, having several PS2's from different manufacturing batches failing is just wrong.

the sales of the old Xbox were "bolstered" too, I believe 22 million Xbox's were made and distributed (which doesn't mean sold), Nintendo would always counter Microsoft by asking for actual sales data which never materialised.

 

[DTWolfwood]

it only took 3-4 years to get to this point! XD

Congratz Sony keep up the good work! and give us back Other OS dammit! heh

 

[edgeofblade]

If they had released the Slim at $300 in 2006 and kept hardware backwards compatibility with PS2 Sony would be far and away the leader of this generation and Blu Ray would have penetrated into as many homes as DVD had at this point in the previous gen.

And Sony would not just be "in the hole": there would be a Sony sized hole where they used to be...

They would need to be in it for the long game.

Once they have the machine widespread enough they say "no, netflix can no longer stream any of the properties of Sony pictures" and start your own streaming movie service. They partner with Skype and come out with a 2.4ghz cordless phone usb plugin and let people make international video calls for 10c a minute or 19.99(+tax) for the monthly plan." They sell computing time on this gigantic worldwide distributed network offering X Sony Points? a month for allowing use of their bandwidth. They add features that let people configure their Sony televisions and Sony receivers from a single unified interface (or remotely) to make it easy for geeks to help norms set everything up. They partner with ISPs to add PSN charges so users only have one unified bill every month. Add a Sony Email address, Sony instant messenger and Sony user homepage with social features and suddenly they are in a position to compete with Facebook.

But none of that is possible unless they have the network penetration to start with.

Oh and with their security features 4 years after launch PS3 is the only system that has 0 piracy. So between their (speculative) lead and that fact where do yo think the AAA developers would focus their efforts?

That kind of ambition doesn't make for good quarterly earnings reports but Japan used to be known for 100 year business plans.

...

That's what we call scope creep. And it's a BAD thing.

Also, consider that in this day and age, 100 year business plans are simply not feasible. They weren't feasible 100 years ago. Too much changes between here and there. A 10 year business plan is getting on the long end these days.

 

[lostzombies.com]

I have al three systems and dont hold any favour to any brand simply what gives the most.

-wii was great fun for about a week and has been sat gathering dust since said week ended. Maybe the odd time it was brought out at Christmas for the odd game of wii sports etc

-PS3 amazing blue ray player, I use it for all my movie watching, its a fantastic dvd player.

-360 is where I go if I want to game. Xbox Live simply blows all other competitors away in terms of quality of service and value for money.

There has so far not been a game on the PS3 which has made me want to go out and buy a copy even though I look each month. If a game is multi platform I get it on 360 so I can play with my friends online. The PS3 exclusives for me simply have not been worth buying while there has been quite a few on 360 which I have loved.

Honestly I can't see me changing this view although I am always open and looking for it to be changed. With the moves that Microsoft are making in the industry I honestly can't see anything other than a stronger market hold for the xbox 3.