PS3 Is "Dying On The Shelves"

[Geoffrey42]

[Everything to date in this thread]

Bitter much?

But one thing I don't get, why are people comparing the sales to last year? Wouldn't you compare them to the month before? I mean, I get it, it's the holidays and all, but a monthly sale is a monthly sale.

Standard business practice. Sales are cyclical, so selling more of a given item in November than in October is almost always true. Even measuring the magnitude of the difference month-over-month doesn't do much for you. Measuring year-to-year though, and comparing the magnitude of the difference (year-over-year) to other products in a similar market segment, or to the economy in general is more useful. Say, consumer spending is up 10% year-over-year, but PS3 only picked up 1%, (entirely theoretical numbers), you could infer that PS3 sales aren't really growing, in fact, they're shrinking as a percentage of disposable income. Same thing goes for January sales. It would be silly to compare January sales to December sales, and go "OH NOES! THE SKY IS FALLING!! SALES ARE DOWN 300%!" Waste of time and energy.

Similarly, if you're in a position where you consider your product to be on the front-end of the [a href=http://sehlhorst.smugmug.com/photos/132613762-M.png]product lifecycle[/a], you expect year-over-year sales to increase. Otherwise, you've hit maturity (stabilized user base), or you're beginning decline. Sony, of the 10-year-lifecycle, are NOT interested in having a mature, stabilized user base. Growth, Growth, GROWTH!!

 

[Mathew952]

You mean it's taken CNN two years to figure out that selling something at nearly double the price will attract fewer buyers? My God, they're geniuses.

I think this sums it all up.

/thread?

With stories like this, I think CNN is dying on the airwaves.

The crisis in mumbai was BREAKING NEWS for 3 days, even when there were NO UPDATES AT ALL.
NO NEW INFO.
I could see if something actually happened. But you can't tell me the same breaking news 3 times.
Also, Breaking news has to be somewhat dramatic. Obama nominating a candidate for the dept of housing is NOT breaking news. But then they had the Pakistani attacks on US choppers, you know, something that could lead to a war with a nuclear nation, as a side story for 2 minutes.

ugh.

 

[Cahlee]

Doesn't surprise me, I own a Wii, and XBOX, I'm getting an XBOX 360 for christmas, a DS and a PS2 but I have absolutely no urge to buy a PS3.. Well.. That's not entirely true, I really want to play Little Big Planet, I know people who've bought the PS3 just so they could play it. I've been supressing the urge.

 

[SirJewBagel]

I'll give my two cents on this (even though its been all said)
Price is the obvious big problem, and the easiest to scapegoat onto...
i'll admit that i lost some hope for sony, seeing that it came out with nothing that could get close to the hype that the 360 and Halo brought along.

In terms of hardware both the PS3 and 360 have its advantages, (i'm not going to attempt to list them off since i have no full un-biased- list)

In general (in my opinion and the opinion of a 'unbiased' by the American OPM Note: they brought the editor and chief of X-box magazine to come and help with the deliberation)) both systems are equal, they both have they're ups and downs.

Then again i don't have a real basis to talk 'trash' about the 360, i've only played two games for it... Halo 3 and Gears of War 2, mainly because my friends are beyond retarded and rather sit and play one game for hours on end then try the other really good games out for the system...
IMO, the ps3 has alot of good games out right now too, SOCOM:confrontation (sp?), LBP and MGS4 to name a FEW. Even though speculation is sometimes never a good thing, God of War 3, Killzone 2, Grand Turismo (5? i can't remember)

all in all though i'm going to say this, and this applies to life in general, if you've never played the other system or done anything pertaining to the other side, you have absolutely no basis to talk shit about it...i mean that if you never played a PS3/360/Wii (3 diffrent games don't count) you have no right to talk shit about it... same with other things like THC (i saw a thread with some guy trying to bash it but i highly doubt hes ever done it...)

With stories like this, I think CNN is dying on the airwaves.

The crisis in mumbai was BREAKING NEWS for 3 days, even when there were NO UPDATES AT ALL.
NO NEW INFO.
I could see if something actually happened. But you can't tell me the same breaking news 3 times.
Also, Breaking news has to be somewhat dramatic. Obama nominating a candidate for the dept of housing is NOT breaking news. But then they had the Pakistani attacks on US choppers, you know, something that could lead to a war with a nuclear nation, as a side story for 2 minutes.
ugh.

BREAKING NEWS!!! OBAMA PICKS OUT THE DOG HE PROMISED HIS DAUGHTERS!!
oh and theres something going on in the middle east involving nuclear *mumble mumble mumble*
but OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[AceDiamond]

I see. So you stereotyped me, and lumped me in with those people. Thats just great.

Indigo, you have nobody to blame for your stereotyping but yourself. I mean you make good points at times, but you really have to tone it down a notch. And yeah, Gamestop really has its hands in the pockets of every company but Sony, I'm sure.

Back on topic, though. It's unsurprising that the PS3 is not doing so well right now because

A. DVDs are still a viable media for movies
B. The PS3 is expensive
C. They are not dropping the price despite the
D. Economic Crisis.

 

[Samah]

Believe it or not, the PS3 cemented blu-ray as the winner of the hi-def format wars, a lucrative win for Sony.

I think you'll find that the main reason Sony won the war was because they BOUGHT their win [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/22/1939200]. Blu-Ray also has more restrictive DRM than HD-DVD, and the MAFIAA love that.
I refuse to buy any Sony product after what they did to Lik-Sang [http://www.lik-sang.com/index.html].

 

[brtshstel]

The NPD report this is from points out that PS3 still has a positive growth for year-on-year total units. November was just a bad month, and folks want the news to sound as gloomy as possible.

The PS3 is _not_ going the way of the Dreamcast because, um, PS3 (16mil+ as of Sept) already beaten the Dreamcast(10.1mil LIFETIME), in sales terms alone, soundly. That won't go away even if they fail to sell another unit, which will not happen.

Even if the Playstation 3's market performance isn't as bad as the article says it is, the seventh generation is still a big departure for Sony. Considering that the previous two generations were both rocket-hot success stories for the multimedia supergiant du jour, the current console war in comparison is looking rather grim. The PlayStation in its two forms was the first home console (Game Boy notwithstanding) to surpass one hundred million units sold. The PlayStation 2 in its two forms was the fastest console to reach one hundred million units sold, is the best selling console of all time, the console that helped DVDs become the industry standard, not to mention that it was essentially *the* competing device that killed the Sega Dreamcast and Sega's hardware division altogether. No small feat if you ask me.

Alas, the PlayStation 3 pushed the innovation envelope a bit too far. It's expensive(for both manufacturer and consumer), harder to program for, and lacks exclusive killer-apps that have done wonders for Microsoft and the past Sony consoles. Although it will take nothing short of an act of God to destroy Sony's gaming department, Sega had a very similar thing happen in the transition from successful Mega Drive (Genesis) to expensive-unpopular-overly-complicated Sega Saturn.

 

[AceDiamond]

Believe it or not, the PS3 cemented blu-ray as the winner of the hi-def format wars, a lucrative win for Sony.

I think you'll find that the main reason Sony won the war was because they BOUGHT their win [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/22/1939200]. Blu-Ray also has more restrictive DRM than HD-DVD, and the MAFIAA love that.
I refuse to buy any Sony product after what they did to Lik-Sang [http://www.lik-sang.com/index.html].

If we're going by past sins rather than present quality, can I point out this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

That means that, unless you are a massive hypocrite, you must now renounce all forms of electronic gaming, and never touch a computer again. See ya.

Yeah and that also means we must stop using anything created by Bayer (and by association anything created as a result of aspirin), stop buying Volkswagens, and anything made by Siemens technology.

Oh and, IBM had a hand in developing the PS3's Cell Processor, so I think you need to get rid of that. Unless of course this is a "do as i say not as I do" situation.