Maybe. I think there is a chance for a nice bundle deal to crop up next week for $249.
All purpose sales and sales rumors/anecdotes thread next gen+
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Maybe. I think there is a chance for a nice bundle deal to crop up next week for $249.
They are conceding to Nintendo as the Wii U is currently #1 on Amazon for the month of December.
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Sony had a pretty terrible generation . I didn't see them pull their heads out of their arse the whole generation. The good will in Europe really helped them skate by that generation but they still sold about 60-70m less units than the previous generation. Also the ps3 shipments have dried up quicker than the xbox 360 sales
PS3 sold as much as the 360 despite launching over a year later. Sounds like a nice recovery to me. Calling one a success and the other a failure is irrational. Both had major issues out of the gate, and both recovered after a die shrink, etc...
Sony also invested significantly into first/second parties during the generation which gave them multiple game of the year awards for Naughty Dogs, Media Molecule, That Game Company... Those were a very important production investment that helped them sustain the popularity of the brand until the PS4 comes out.
Sony also invested significantly into first/second parties during the generation which gave them multiple game of the year awards for Naughty Dogs, Media Molecule, That Game Company... Those were a very important production investment that helped them sustain the popularity of the brand until the PS4 comes out.
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Going from 25 million to 85 million is a lot different than going from 160 million to 85 million. If you and Usain Bolt tied in a 100 m race with a time of 14 secs, your jubilation would be just as rational as his disgust.
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Bad analogy, gamers are not very loyal to a platform.
Depends, if I was backed by a billion dollar mega corporation, and raised with gene therapy and undetectable enhancement drugs... it would be expected that I would beat Usain Bolt on my first public appearance. The merit would be the corporation's technology, not my "talent" at running.
Say YES to drugs.
Winners use drugs.
Say YES to drugs.
Winners use drugs.
Say yes to drugs.
Fun people use drugs.
Fun people use drugs.
LOL.
Still doesn't change the circumstances. When you are looking at your first console selling 25 million, you have a whole different outlook of what "success" entails then someone coming off 100+ million for each of the last two generations.
Unless you are Fox Rogers and have access to a Super Runner formula.
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Here's a football analogy;
The underdogs took a 2-0 lead early on, the favourites managed to score a goal just before half-time and then an equaliser in the final minutes. Yes to say 2-2 was a success for the underdogs and a failure for the favourites however I'm fairly certain from a professional PoV the underdogs would feel they failed to capture there best chance of winning the game and the favourites would feel a draw was better than the loss it looked like being for so long. Not only that, but by dragging the game to a draw in the replay they stuffed the underdogs!
The market has moved since the PS2, I don't think anybody is going to have those sorts of numbers with cell phones and tablets eating into potential hardware sales. Further I'd say selling basically one less year and ending up with virtually same install base suggest Sony did rebound from their early mistakes and go on to sell at a decent clip (arguably faster) for much of the generation.
Its probably fair to say PS3 sales have slowed down since the release of PS4 but that might very well be a function of the attractiveness of PS4 as much as anything else.
In fact if someone wants to insist PS3 sales fell off too early I could argue that if 360 sales held on too long because it took time for MS to repair the mistakes with XB1 and for those who wished to stay in the MS ecosystem it made sense to buy a(nother) 360 versus invest in XB1.
Eastman's characterization isn't very rational or very objective in that sense because he doesn't give Sony any credit for something that is very open to interpretation (the drop in PS3 sales since launch of current generation). I just don't see how someone draws his conclusions.
To say it another way you have to pretend tablets and cell phones didn't have an impact on the overall market and cling to the notion that gamers are loyal to platforms which just doesn't appear to be true to a large degree to conclude Sony had their head in their butt all of last generation.... At some point relatively early they realized they had misjudged the market and did a good job winning back consumers - something I think we see MS attempting to do with XB1. If that isn't true the generation should have ended up far more lopsided than it did.
I thought NPD figures were off the table these days?
I don't know how it works that's why i am asking
Thursday not today
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I think it would be interesting to look at the respective break-down for regions. Wikipedia is a bit out of date, but I presume it's common knowledge that X360 sold more in the US, but the PS3 was able to level for world-wide-sales thanks to stronger sales in Europe and Japan. Given that Japan has been on a decline ever since the PS2 times and the general circumstance that gamers have more options to chose from on where to play their games, we can assume that it's also common sense that total market size explicitly for consoles has probably shrunk. Selling 140+ million consoles is no longer a feasible expectation.
Also that number is very exaggerated. There are far more people within those 140 million stat that have bought multiple consoles. I had two PS2s and I also had two PS3s (the latter I went to the slim model for convenience sake). I'd say any serious gamer has probably found themselves buying the same console twice at later stages, either because of wear or because of convenience too. Less frequently used consoles like those from occasional gamers probably less as their machines is probably used less frequently too. So what is the real number? I'd say 66% of that, though I think the likelihood of people buying multiple consoles increases with the number of consoles on the market and the timing within that generation. E.g.: You will not expect anyone to buy two of the same kind within the first 3-4 years within a consoles life. But perhaps over 4 years that likelihood increases, especially as console prices comes down, the game library grows and cheaper newer revisions of that same consoles become available.
The number of consoles on the market is probably a meaningless number (after a certain point) anyway, especially once you consider that the first 10-20 million are sold at a loss and its really the software sales that make up for it until hardware revisions mean that they break even on hardware or are even able to sell them at a profit.
Personally, I think the PS3 is a success, despite it losing marketshare. It's just underlines how strong the brandname PlayStation is and I think the X360s success is by large a factor of Sony being late to the party and many ex PC gamers going to the Xbox due to consoles having certain benefits and Microsoft bringing a very very good platform that brought these games to their platform and to the console market (as multiplatform titles). Bad news is, they didn't end up staying exclusive to the Xbox platform, but are multiplatform titles and given the stronger position Sony is in with the PS4, has probably meant that lots of those gamers have turned to Sonys platform this time around. It's still very close in the US, but I expect the gap to slowly increase over time and more casual gamers will flock to the platform that seems more popular.
It's still early days, but thinking ahead, I think it will be very similar next generation too, as long as both consoles remain more or less identical hardware wise and launch within the same time period and are not overly different from one another (no major distinguishing features). I expect the PlayStation brandname to pull through and continue the trend. The only question is, can Microsoft (or Sony) pull ahead on the software front and offer something extraordinary that the other doesn't think of.
Loyalty has nothing to do with it because regardless of how loyal or disloyal gamers are, Sony did a pretty good job of dominating the previous two gens. Their expectations as well as others for the PS3 were a lot higher than the expectations MS had for the xbox 360. Despite the volatility of the gaming marketing and unless something drastically changes this gen, Sony has for the most part managed to be the market leader of 3 out of the last 4 gens. Sony has shown the ability to operate and execute well in the space despite the ever changing market. Being late, being overpriced or whatever reasons one can point to the PS3 less than stellar performance are mostly products of poor execution, not the whims of the market.
Its like Apple doubling, tripling or quadtrupling their sales while Google sees their dominance in market evaporate and both Apple and Google ends up with equal share of the market. Apple would deem that a success, while Google would not, regardless of the circumstances.
The same for the PS3 and 360. One led to end of Sony's dominance while the other made MS a relevant player in space.
They are both pretty good consoles in their own right (I preferred the PS3 personally) but there were different expectations set for the two consoles from the outset.
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I'll just say it again; I think Sony's mistakes (launching late, and at that high price) only really impacted their position in the US and against the X360. At the same time, the reasons for being late, were features that on the other hand made people swing to the PS3 in the first place. Some bought the PS3 as a bluray player, others in their belief that it was going to be more powerful than any other console available.
"Circumstance" simply meant that on the PS2, people did not have any reasonable alternative means to play games. The PlayStation2 and on the TV was the best and only way. That changes in later on as smartphones became more available and made all those people not really interested in gaming flock to buying mini games for their already available phones and NOT buy a console and be a nerd. So the console market was always going to shrink irregardless what Microsoft or Sony do.
So I guess you are right; there are two perspectives here. Sony did lose marketshare in all markets relative to the Xbox, but maybe that was just inevitable? Lets assume they didn't launch late - but that would have meant not launching with Bluray. They might have given less ground to Microsoft, but at the same time lost sales of people who bought a PS3 under the premise that it was more powerful and had a bluray drive. Not to mention the loss of not propelling Bluray to the definitive optical medium. So all in all, I think they did fantastic and it was important to them to stick with Bluray and the PS3 in the form they launched.
"Circumstance" simply meant that on the PS2, people did not have any reasonable alternative means to play games. The PlayStation2 and on the TV was the best and only way. That changes in later on as smartphones became more available and made all those people not really interested in gaming flock to buying mini games for their already available phones and NOT buy a console and be a nerd. So the console market was always going to shrink irregardless what Microsoft or Sony do.
So I guess you are right; there are two perspectives here. Sony did lose marketshare in all markets relative to the Xbox, but maybe that was just inevitable? Lets assume they didn't launch late - but that would have meant not launching with Bluray. They might have given less ground to Microsoft, but at the same time lost sales of people who bought a PS3 under the premise that it was more powerful and had a bluray drive. Not to mention the loss of not propelling Bluray to the definitive optical medium. So all in all, I think they did fantastic and it was important to them to stick with Bluray and the PS3 in the form they launched.
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