400 K ps3 in USA, 100 K ps3 in Japan at launch

[Laa-Yosh]

latest figures tell MS has sold till august 2.4 million xbox360 in the us. so make that 4million globaly, how do you expect them to sell 11 mil by march next year??

What kind of sales data is that? My numbers are completely different for US console sales of PS2 and Xbox (generally lower, for example Xbox sales are well below 50,000 per month by now...)

By the way, x360 sales are the same as the stats I've gathered from NDP reports. But they're not counting all units AFAIK...

 

[hey69]

npd numbers


xbox figures are from the same time at launch to comparision

Game Boy Advance 156k
GameCube 41k
Nintendo DS 278k
PlayStation 2 262k
PlayStation Portable 146k
Xbox 9k
Xbox 360 204k

this last month

 

[A176]

I agree. 100K is just an insult, I would think.

I know it will never happen, but it would be hilarious if Blue Dragon was really popular and made the 360 outsell the PS3 in Japan this year.

Firstly, I'm surprised (read: really surprised) people haven't touched on the 100k units for japan much, and secondly, I also believe in the Blue Dragon situation.

It is well know by both Sony and gamers in Japan, that brand loyalty is quite the driving factor in purchasing decisions, atleast, from what we've heard from the 360 launch. Not to mention title exclusivity, which is also a huge driver in terms of console purchasing.

After the success of the PS1, Sony sold around a million PS2 units for the PS2's launch (iirc), and a full 8 months before the American release. This has continued throughout its lifetime with support on both the hardware and software fronts.

I very much read this as an insult to japanese gamers who have probably purchased more than one PS2 over the past couple of years (ps2 slim, ps2 silver, dvd drive problems, etc).

Blue Dragon has been on Famitsu's most wanted list for god knows how long now, despite having only shown that one demo reel over and over again. They must really want it - and if its true that playable demos will be available at TGS (for both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey), then I forsee a lot more 360s coming off the shelves.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Thing is, quite a few 360 titles have made their way onto Famitsu's list, and they don't sell worth shit.

The japanese [market] [is] wierd, there's no predicting [it] but really who cares. If they don't want Blue Dragon I'll usre as hell take it, Lost Odyssey too.

Hopefully even if the software doesn't move units in JPN, the game will go on to be a multi-million seller worldwide, and prove that 360 is a viable platform for JRPG's. That way, the publishers will have to wake up, and can't use the weak ass steretype that 360 owners only like shooters, racers and online games.

 

[mboeller]

here is a rough google-translation of news about the PS3 blue diode situation:

link: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77785

at the end of of Decembers one delivered hopefully two Millionenen of devices world-wide.
Even if then all machines run on full speed, Sony could deliver at best five million
Playstation-3-Konsolen with a production rate of one million devices per month to at the
end of March.
Even these numbers sound optimistic in view of the current production difficulties with
the blue laser diodes. According to Brancheninsidern the production yield lies at present
only with 10 to 13 per cent, the difficulties in the mass production will not be solved today
or tomorrow. On the one hand Sony produces the diodes themselves and allegedly
orders of OEM customers until further notice rejected. All diodes go to the new Joint
venture at Optiarc, between NEC and Sony, which produce both the drive assemblies for the
Playstation 3 and Hp-DVD-drive assemblies for NEC. All other offerers of HD-DVD and Blu ray
drive assemblies would have to fall back and know at present to diodes of Nichia likewise
only homöopathische quantities to supply. For a Pickup Head with blue laser diode drive
assembly manufacturer in the purchase would have to pay momentarily astronomical prices
from 150 to 250 US Dollar. This explains also the high prices first Blu ray and
HD-DVD-drive assemblies.

Sorry for the bad translation but I'm too lazy to make a real translation.

The important info here is that the situation with the blue diodes for the blue ray drive will not be solved within a few months but will take far longer. So the PS3 will be in short supply for a long time after launch.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The important info here is that the situation with the blue diodes for the blue ray drive will not be solved within a few months but will take far longer.

May I ask how they know that? Is this a technical site that knows the nature of the yield problems and why it can't be solved readily?

 

[liolio]

yes Shifty everybody knows you're right.
But there have been news on the web (someday before delay announcement) telling that all diode manufacturers had problem with yelds for both BR and HDDVD diode.
The news were sayoing all the compagny expect a "back to normal situation" in spring.
Anyway there is room for improvement until spring.
But we still don't know and sony PR mean nothing in that regard.
companies can fix it quickly or not I agree but the same companies expect better time in spring.
We still have choice to be pessimistic or optimistic, being aggressive is not the way to go.

 

[one]

companies can fix it quickly or not I agree but the same companies expect better time in spring.

"The same companies" who?

 

[liolio]

i'll edit later, i'm working.
By the same companies I mean other companies that produce diode for BR and hd dvd.
Diode are different but seems ti encounter the problem as far as production is concerned.
will try later to find the news, i'm not sure they give name of these different companies.

 

[Dave Baumann]

npd numbers

NPD do not capture full sales data for the US even - its not accurate to use their numbers for actual total units sold, merely as a trending guide.

 

[NavNucST3]

NPD do not capture full sales data for the US event - its not accurate to use their numbers for actual total units sold, merely as a trending guide.

NPD captures, what 65%, at most. I don't think they have ever hit 70%

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think NPD figures are accurate to about 15-25% of the full sales. They capture most of the largest retail chains and add estimates for WalMart and Sam's Club. Unless you believe a disproportionate amount of sales come from businesses other than Best Buy, EB, Toys R Us, Circuit City, Amazon, etc., the amount in the NPD coverage should represent a majority large slice of the market, and the extra missing amount added in as a percentage. NPD say they cover over 75% of the market, almost 85% with their WalMart and Sam's Club estimates, which would place their figures at 75-85% of the total sold figures. Depending on the proportion of non-mainstream companies serving the gaming populace, that figure could go up or down, but from what I can gather everyone who buys consoles and games goes to a major retail chain and not a family run corner store, so I doubt NPD is worse than 15% from the actual sold figures, and they might well be very close to full figures.

 

[Geo]

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/...d=1VKYZM2YCSZ4AQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=192600057

I don't recall seeing this exact quote here, so:

To achieve this goal, Sony must bring its crystalline growing reactors online for mass producing blue lasers. The reactors were scheduled to come online earlier this year, but engineers failed to meet the ramp-up schedule.

"We have established a process technology for blue laser production," said a Sony spokesman. "We are already making blue lasers fabricated with a former reactor. But it took more time than we planned to tune the large reactors for volume production."

They are presenting it as past tense, "took" rather than "taking". That's a thin reed tho, and it seems unlikely they could really know that the yields they need are going to be there, or they'd have more than 500k for launch in November. It must still be speculative, as if the yields were proven *today* then I can't see any reason why they'd only have 500k for November.

So I think it still really comes down to those damn diodes on just how close they get to their targets. I'm still thinking 6M isn't going to happen, but whether they even get into the 4M+ range is, I suspect, going to come down to whether the diode problem really is already fixed.

 

[expletive]

Sony and Nichia Corp. agreed to cross license blue laser technologies in April 2004.

Does that imply that Sony and Nichia will experience similar yields as time goes on?

Said Kutaragi: "If asked whether Sony's level of manufacturing technology declined, I have to admit it under the present circumstance. But Sony intends to prove its technical capabilities by manufacturing the necessary number of blue lasers from now on."

He also gives the impression that the worst is behind them but I wouldnt expect them to release bad news and follow it up with "and the worst is yet to come." Delivering bad news and then giving reasons to restore confidence with the market is PR 101.

I think only time will tell, and anything coming out of Sony at this point should not be used as an indicator on what we're in for over the next 6 months.

 

[patsu]

anything coming out of Sony at this point should not be used as an indicator on what we're in for over the next 6 months.

That's too harsh. We just need to watch the availability numbers. It's not like they only discovered the problems 2 days ago. Didn't an earlier article mentioned that they tested mass manufacturing in July ? That means the real work started much earlier, with different level of production run.

I find it funny that Ken is admitting "If asked whether Sony's level of manufacturing technology declined, I have to admit it under the present circumstance.". Looks like there's going to be some shake up over there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's not like they only discovered the problems 2 days ago. Didn't an earlier article mentioned that they tested mass manufacturing in July ? That means the real work started much earlier, with different level of production run.

If the problem was addressed in July, and ramped up to 1 million units, they're wouldn't be 500k for the worldwide launch. Launching in November, Sony could not start manufacturing until beginning of October and still get a million. If they're manufacturing PS3's now, and only make 500k by launch, that's 250k a month. I don't know what other delays are involved though. eg. Maybe Sony want to cap it to 500k for launch when they could do more, because they want to waste loads of money on flying units to the US? Or maybe after making the crystals, it takes a few weeks to get them into BRD drives, and they take a couple of weeks to get into PS3s?

 

[expletive]

That's too harsh.

I'm not trying to be harsh, theyre just doing their jobs by spinning this as best they can and i dont blame them. I'm just recognizing that they are in probably in full-on 'spin-mode' right now.

I find it funny that Ken is admitting "If asked whether Sony's level of manufacturing technology declined, I have to admit it under the present circumstance.". Looks like there's going to be some shake up over there.

Good for him though, that's being a leader in my book. He stepped up and took responsibility.

 

[hey69]

You got it good
You don't know how good you've got it
You got it easy
Each and every day

So goes an old song...

Lamentably, those few sentences portray perfectly how we on the old continent feel about the state of the games industry in Northern America. While we have to endure delay after delay for most things relating to video gaming, the U.S. – despite being a similar-sized market – gets almost everything faster and cheaper then we do here in Euro Land.

Lately however, the trend seemed to be changing. A near-simultaneous worldwide launch for the Xbox 360 and promises for simultaneous worldwide launches for the Nintendo Wii and Sony's PS3 juggernaut seemed to indicate that hardware manufacturers had finally started to recognize the growing importance of the worlds second largest video game market. Finally, it appeared that we would no longer be getting the short end of the stick when it came to new hardware.

........
snip
.....
The majority of the people we spoke to however weren't as drastic in their approach, with most saying that they would wait it out because the PS3 will be worth it. Still, others told us that they were indeed disappointed but had expected another delay but didn't mind it too much because it would allow them more time to save up for games, buy a HDTV, or even to spend some more quality time with the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii when the latter finally arrives.

...snip.....

So despite Europe getting shafted yet again, from a marketing and financial standpoint, this really might have been the best choice out of a really bad situation for Sony. The European love affair with all things PlayStation seems nigh on indestructible, so despite the current bad feedback from Europe, this all makes sense for Japan, given the low launch numbers for the PS3. Europe will most likely eventually come by and hand Sony another console victory. That is, if Sony of Japan can actually solve its production problems, since what we are getting now is essentially a quarter of what it had promised to have ready for a worldwide launch.


http://www.got-next.com/

http://www.got-next.com/features_read.php?id=395

 

[patsu]

If the problem was addressed in July, and ramped up to 1 million units, they're wouldn't be 500k for the worldwide launch. Launching in November, Sony could not start manufacturing until beginning of October and still get a million. If they're manufacturing PS3's now, and only make 500k by launch, that's 250k a month. I don't know what other delays are involved though. eg. Maybe Sony want to cap it to 500k for launch when they could do more, because they want to waste loads of money on flying units to the US? Or maybe after making the crystals, it takes a few weeks to get them into BRD drives, and they take a couple of weeks to get into PS3s?

According to one's article, if the first batch comes mainly from the original reactor, this means that when the other reactors are fine-tuned or online, production number will multiply.

I don't know how the yield was spread (e.g., most of them near 10-15% ? or a few exceptionally high -- like 30% -- and most super low -- like 5% --). If said manufacturing problem is fixed, the production curve should be closer to a discrete/digital graph... not a continuous one.

What Sony has definitely lost is the production lead time and their credibility. They should be testing their subsequent runs soon (if not already). Sony should be rather familiar with Blu-ray manufacturing by now. I don't think they are clueless.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

npd numbers

Xbox 360 204k

this last month

By the way, I did a little math and extrapolation here, based on the past 4 years' data, for X360:

september 200K
october 200K
november 400K
december 800K

Alltogether 1.6 million; add the 2.4 sold already and it's at 4 million according to NDP. Compensating for their market coverage, X360 USA sales should be around 5.5-6.5 million units at the end of this year.

My graphs for past years show that sales are flat for the summer, but double up once for november and once again for december - at least. The first Xbox has moved more than 1.5 million units in the last 2 months of both 2003 and 2004; and it was selling 170-210 thousand units only during the summer months. So it is actually a very conservative calculation and I wouldn't be surprised if - thanks to low PS3 supply - Microsoft manages to move a million boxes according to NDP in december 2006.