PS2 Reaches 80 Million Mark

[Vince]

How is it ? The market grows each year, its actually a let down that they didn't sell that many units faster, considering the market was willing to bear this many units 5 years ago .

You do fail to consider that Sony has sold 80 Million PS2's at the $150 price point or greater, with the majority of sales above $200 AFAIK. With PSOne, they were nowhere near as revenue rich, nor did they come anywhere near achieving such sales at analogous price points.

If you want you find a rain-cloud, I'm most convinced you will.

 

[jvd]

if u want to find sunny skys vince i have no doubt that you will as when it comes to sony thats al lyour interested in finding .

Yes i'm aware that sony did this with a higher price point , i'm also aware that they did it with a defective pstwo system

 

[Vince]

Yes i'm aware that sony did this with a higher price point , i'm also aware that they did it with a defective pstwo system

I was expecting the first part, but what the heck does the above mean?

 

[Acert93]

why should we ?


They did it 4 months faster than the last system ? So what ? Shall we jump up and down when the xenon sells 20million systems faster than the xbox does and praise ms ?

It's not just that they managed to sell the same amount in 4 months less time but rather that they sold that many again. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, selling as many as they did is a HUGE feat that they did twice no less.

How is it ? The market grows each year , its actually a let down that they didn't sell that many units faster , considering the market was willing to bear this many units 5 years ago .

But how much more can the market hold? Look at the 5 years period in which the PS, N64, and SS sold. How many total units were shipped in the US, Asia, and Europe? Then compare how many PS2, GCN, and Xbox consoles were sold over the last 5 years. It would also be noteworthy to look at the SNES/Genesis sales.

If the market is fairly saturated, then they have done a good job of capturing the market available.

Another way to look at it is market share (regardless of total sales). If the PS sold 80M, and the N64 sold 30M in the first 5 years (I believe that is about right... correct me with hard numbers if I am off) and tack on a few SS/DC sales, and you now compare the 80M PS2 sales and the ~17M-18M Xbox/GCN sales. What we see is that Sony is holding onto their market share for the most part.

So the "let down" you are talking about does not exist for the most part. Sony has kept pace with the market and previous PS sales for the most part.

EDIT: My numbers were pretty close. It appears that the current generation has only grown a bit in total console sales since the previous generation. So the arguement that there was a let down because the market can hold more is a stretch. Yes, it can hold more, but we are looking at a small percentage (not the huge leap that was seen from the 16bit to 32bit generations). Any way you dice it up, Sony has dominated this last round. I would put both the GCN and Xbox as mild successes in their own ways, but when it comes to market penestration and install base there is no competition.

Btw, I own a GCN and only play the Xbox and PS2 at friends homes. A lot of the "mature" themed games on the PS2 do not sit well with me, unlike the more family oriented material Nintendo publishes. But separating my personal taste from reality is important--and reality says Sony has kicked butt. I do not see any reason to downplay their success.

 

[jvd]

Yes i'm aware that sony did this with a higher price point , i'm also aware that they did it with a defective pstwo system

I was expecting the first part, but what the heck does the above mean?

hit up any retalier and ask how many pstwos were returned from the random restart problem.


Local game stops have had 18 of the 50 they sold returned , toys r us had 10 of the 80 they sold returned for the same problem .

It hasn't hit the web yet but it will .

 

[Vince]

Local game stops have had 18 of the 50 they sold returned , toys r us had 10 of the 80 they sold returned for the same problem .

It hasn't hit the web yet but it will .

Well, first of all the PStwo has very little market penetration JVD when viewing the entire userbase that's composed of atleast 95% 50K or less numbered units; you're argument is bogus. Secondly, I can't wait untill the stories break onto the web about how the Japenese are back to paving roads with PS2's -- maybe we can inter-twine the "faulty PS2" meme with the Yamauchi "suck on my little yellow balls" meme... that would be cool. Anyways, I need to get back to work... been a slice.

 

[jvd]

vince say whatever u want , its my job to do the defective returns for my store (yea needed extra money during the holidays ) and those are the numbers and my friend is floor manager of the r zone of the local toys r us on route 4 .

Now unless for some reason sony doesn't like paramus there is something wrong with the pstwos , But then again even if there is they wont say anything like they didn't say with the playstation systems .

 

[Devourer]

JVD, we got the message, Sony is doomed and PlayStations are crap. Stop the madness

 

[Ty]

How is it ? The market grows each year , its actually a let down that they didn't sell that many units faster , considering the market was willing to bear this many units 5 years ago .

That's a fair consideration (as is the price point mentioned by Vince) as all of these surely do impact the penetration/market acceptance of the PS2.

Answer me one off-topic question then though. How does your perspective on the market growing impact how well the GCN and XBox did in the end then? After all, if the market grew, then doesn't this further diminish how well both of those consoles did?

Acert,

Great post with data to back it up. Tks.

Fyi, I own a DC, GCN, & XBox (purchased in that order).

 

[gleemax]

what do i know , even if they were sold doesn't mean they are still sold , i my local gamestop has 20 used ps2s .

Oh, yeah. Totally. I see what you mean. Let's do some math:

80,000,000 - 20 = 79,999,980

Wow. Of course, there are a couple thousand GameStops, so:

80,000,000 - 40000 = 79,960,000

Those used PS2s really start to add up, don't they? Clearly, Sony sold nowhere near eighty million PS2s.

mabye a million

Yeah, that seems obvious. I heard a rumor that Sony is burying unsold PS2s in a New Mexico landfill...

 

[jvd]

Answer me one off-topic question then though. How does your perspective on the market growing impact how well the GCN and XBox did in the end then? After all, if the market grew, then doesn't this further diminish how well both of those consoles did?

I can't really say much about the xbox except mabye as a console from a company that has no experiance or brand name pull in these market it was to little to late , it really didn't have many reasons to jump ship to it adn only now in its late years does it have alot of games worth buying .


For the gamecube i think this is just a continueing trend for nintendo , this is the 4th system from them that has sold less than the one before it , the launch didn't have a killer tittle (super mario world for the super nes , mario 64 for the n64 ) it didn't have man large titles and it missed the trend on what the fans wanted . Also that coupled with the design of the unit (which is very kid like ) IT could still come close to the 28 million units the n64 sold (think it was 28 million ) there is still another year left for the system and perhaps re4 and loz will sell alot of systems Perhaps it will hit around 24million hwen all is said and done , still the wrong direction , but there are two large companys in the market .


Look i'm glad sony shipped 80 million units , that is great ,it shows that the market is a very viable one and it will let other companys hopefully jump in or renew microsofts hunger for the market . But to say this is a big deal when its not is just more hype from sony fans . The fact that is only did it 4 months earlier when there has been 5 years of market growth is a problem. Esp when you look at the total units sold last generation between the 3 systems and this one , it looks like the market has shurnk

 

[cthellis42]

The fact that is only did it 4 months earlier when there has been 5 years of market growth is a problem. Esp when you look at the total units sold last generation between the 3 systems and this one , it looks like the market has shurnk

Then you'll be glad to know that it is indeed four months PLUS one year, as previously stated. They didn't pay much attention to their date spans. The PS2 has been a year ahead of the PS1's timeframe since it hit 10 million units, and barring a few periods (like when the PS1 really sprinted from 20 to 40), the PS2 has in grown faster proportionally. And at the 80 million shipped mark, that puts them 16 months ahead of the PS1's schedule.

For other reference, I believe the N64 sold ~33 million at the end of its lifespan. At least that's what the best tracking site I've found says, and Nintendo itself vouches for over 32 million.

 

[Ty]

I can't really say much about the xbox except mabye as a console from a company that has no experiance or brand name pull in these market it was to little to late , it really didn't have many reasons to jump ship to it adn only now in its late years does it have alot of games worth buying .

I agree with what you're saying here. I too bought my Xbox just a bit over a year ago. For me, there really wasn't much of a reason to buy one earlier. So even though I agree with your reasoning WHY the Xbox didn't do so great, that didn't answer my question about how well MS did considering that you said the market had increased.

For the gamecube i think this is just a continueing trend for nintendo , this is the 4th system from them that has sold less than the one before it , the launch didn't have a killer tittle (super mario world for the super nes , mario 64 for the n64 ) it didn't have man large titles and it missed the trend on what the fans wanted . Also that coupled with the design of the unit (which is very kid like ) IT could still come close to the 28 million units the n64 sold (think it was 28 million ) there is still another year left for the system and perhaps re4 and loz will sell alot of systems Perhaps it will hit around 24million hwen all is said and done , still the wrong direction , but there are two large companys in the market .

I also absolutely agree with this statement about Nintendo and why they failed to do well in this generation (btw, I didn't know they have sold less consoles each generation - guess I never thought about it). But this also doesn't answer the same question. Considering you are saying the market has increased, then isn't the sales figure for the GCN even worse with respect to that?

Look i'm glad sony shipped 80 million units , that is great ,it shows that the market is a very viable one and it will let other companys hopefully jump in or renew microsofts hunger for the market . But to say this is a big deal when its not is just more hype from sony fans . The fact that is only did it 4 months earlier when there has been 5 years of market growth is a problem. Esp when you look at the total units sold last generation between the 3 systems and this one , it looks like the market has shurnk

Ok, so if I got Cthellis' post correct, then the PS2 got to the 80 million in a much shorter time. Do you consider that impressive now, jvd?

 

[jvd]

Ok, so if I got Cthellis' post correct, then the PS2 got to the 80 million in a much shorter time. Do you consider that impressive now, jvd?

If it is 16 months faster then yes i'm very impressed , even a year would have been impressive , but not 4 months .



Though my bringing up that the market for the other 2 players in the um market is not a good thing for us going into the future , one dominate player is not a good thing .

 

[Ty]

Though my bringing up that the market for the other 2 players in the um market is not a good thing for us going into the future , one dominate player is not a good thing .

I think we all agree with you there.

 

[Almasy]

I think we all agree with you there.

Not really. Call me a fanboy, but I´m fine with Sony being such a dominant player. Of course, competition will be there and should never dissapear. Still, God knows I´d be better off with a single console that offered almost all of the games I´m interested in, rather than investing in three consoles with equal userbase where I would have less options in each one of them.

It´s logical because each console would have to have a sales arguement and exclusive titles to make them all equally appealing to the consumer. They would have an approximately equal ammount of grat titles. Thus, not one of them would dominate nor have as many great titles as a dominant console where the mayority of titles would gravitate to.

For example, I´d really like to play Halo 2 and Ninja Gaiden, but there´s no way I´m spending $150+ at this time to buy one plus the $50 for each game. It´s too much, especially when I already have a GCN and PS2. I´d much rather have them on PS2/GCN and be done with it...and an even more efficient solution for me would be to have all titles that interested me on PS2 to avoid spending money on another console.

Again, call me a fanboy, but I believe that the best option for the gamer would be to concentrate the majority of titles on a single console, to avoid unnecesary expenses.

 

[Ty]

That is an interesting argument. Can't say I agree with it yet as I'll have to think about it more.....interesting nonetheless.

 

[Fodder]

With a console monopoly, you lose incentive for hardware to advance and for the manufacturer to invest in developers. The only way a single system monopoly can continue to provide cutting edge content is if there is internal competition driving the system development, as there is with the PC, which then neuters one of console developments greatest strengths - the set target platform. You can also forget about the pricedrops that have made the current three systems such a steal right now.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I agree with Almasy 100%

There's no way I see the various consoles as a good thing for consumers. I just can't find any pluses for it.
You can argue that it keeps the prices at a tolerable level, and that might be true to a certain extent... while still there has not been evidence that competition really would have done much (if at all) to the prices that matter the most, namely the prices of games.
A console is a one time purchase, a 10, 50 or even 100 bucks really doesn't matter that much to the consumer as most of his gaming budget goes to the games.

I too would love to play Metroid Prime, Paper Mario, F Zero, Panzer Dragoon Orta, GT4, MGS3... without having to set up three consoles and try to find a way how to connect them all in RGB scart for best oicture quality to my tv that only has one rgb capable scart.
It's not really the cost of the consoles that keep me from buying more than one, as they are really cheap nowadays, but the clutter they would bring to my livingroom and av gear.

It´s logical because each console would have to have a sales arguement and exclusive titles to make them all equally appealing to the consumer. They would have an approximately equal ammount of grat titles. Thus, not one of them would dominate nor have as many great titles as a dominant console where the mayority of titles would gravitate to.

That's an interesting observation, although Im not sure I agree with that 100%. But I think at least the number of crappy ports would decrease.

An universal standard for consoles does seem to be far far away though, as there are too many funbois among the console buying consumers.
Just look at what happened to Sega. When they had their own console, their games were considered state of art for playability, but as soon as they no longer had a console of their own, their games image in eyes of the public and even critics suffered.
The quality of their games were just too much tied to the image of Sega as a whole, including their consoles. That same applies to Nintendo and to a lesser extent to Microsoft and Sony.

Just imagine if a Zelda game was made to PS2! I'm sure it would get a much more lacklustre reception than if it were released for Nintendo console, as Zelda on a Playstation would be just 1/2 Zelda just because you'd know it's not running on your cute Nintendo hardware.

As soon as these companies attached a strong "mascot person" (Mario, Link, Master Chief...) to their console they were in danger of putting the faith of their console business in the shoulders of thes poor (not poor as in bad) characters They didn't think what would happen if for some reason the house these characters lived would be blown away... where'd they live then and what would happen to those companies as they pretty much lived from theose characters

 

[-tkf-]

With a console monopoly, you lose incentive for hardware to advance and for the manufacturer to invest in developers. The only way a single system monopoly can continue to provide cutting edge content is if there is internal competition driving the system development, as there is with the PC, which then neuters one of console developments greatest strengths - the set target platform. You can also forget about the pricedrops that have made the current three systems such a steal right now.

A single console would still have to fight with other enterainment, the moment the console gets old and boring the customer will turn to other kinds of entertainment. And the PC would be a much stronger competition if Microsoft backed it 100%