Final confirmed Jan NPD's

[Jov]

Actually those numbers put it on par with xb360's first year. If this were Sony's original target, well nobody would be shocked However their target was 1million per month, now. I'm guessing they wanted to increase this output by the end of the year for Christmas sales.

Dont worry about production, I believe Sony will reduce the cost of their console (wrt initial const) quicker than the others.

We can dig this thread up after the release of some heavy hitters on the PS3.. then we can have another debate regarding how well Sony's strategy make or break platform.

You dont built 100+mil userbase for the last two gen to just throw it away without going after something that will provide a greater benefit to the group.

Like I said before, if they win with BR MS will be on the backfoot just like how DVD took off with the aid of the PS2.

 

[22psi]

Interesting tidbit:

Third-Party Wii Sales Sluggish

More than anything, these results indicated the strong pull of first-party titles on Nintendo systems. In the Wii's third month on store shelves, the second best-selling game for the console, Twilight Princess, sold over twice as many units as the third best-selling title, Rayman Raving Rabbids. While initial sales of third-party games were pretty solid, they seem to have slowed down significantly in the following months.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/766/766513p1.html

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Like I said before, if they win with BR MS will be on the backfoot just like how DVD took off with the aid of the PS2.

The PS2 had nothing to do with DVD succeeding or taking of as a movie format. The DVD didnt have any real competition, and it was well established before the PS2 was even out.

Prior to the PS2 launch, we already had close to 25million DVD players sold in the US alone. After 2002 there was allready more DVD players sold than PS2 in the states until 2007.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html

 

[Natoma]

Interesting tidbit:

http://wii.ign.com/articles/766/766513p1.html

This is a tad more hopeful bit from the article:

This inclination for gamers to buy Nintendo systems primarily for Nintendo games is a trend that the company has been trying to buck with the Wii; even going so far as to court specific third-party publishers in order to secure more content. Even still, it remains painfully obvious that the biggest competitor for third-parties on Nintendo consoles is Nintendo itself. However, pessimistic armchair-analysts should note that the severe dearth of new Wii titles for the month of January may have played a major role in the recurrence of this trend. February's NPD results will be far more telling, as several big-name third-party titles will have been released during that time period.

If the 3rd party sales don't pick up for the quality 3rd party titles (who cares about the shovelware crap), then Nintendo will be in a world of hurt later on from the standpoint of the 3rd party publishers.

 

[AntShaw]

Both versions of Lost Planet in the Top 10. Pretty impressive.

Gears still going strong. What's WW sales up to at this point? 4mil?? 5mil??

 

[temesgen]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8143

On the hardware front, one particularly notable statistic was the Xbox 360's approximately 250,000 hardware units sold in January,

January 2006 xbox360 sales - 250k (supply constrained)

January 2007 PS3 sales - 244k (not supply constrained)


January last year was a 4 week month. This year was a 5 week month. Not good looks for Sony at all.

Perhaps PS3 was not suplly constrained but it was competing against 2 other systems... 360 had the market all to itself thru October of last year... So it might be better to not draw a comparision at all as the comparision is just flawed on MANY levels.

 

[Crayon]

PS2 destroys the world. Still.

My PS3 is essentially a 600 dollar PS2 wireless controller.

Im paying for potential.

If you combine the PS2 and PS3 numbers you have over half a million units. That doesn't sound like an unreasonable metric to me. Suprised not to see it mentioned.

 

[Natoma]

PS2 destroys the world. Still.

My PS3 is essentially a 600 dollar PS2 wireless controller.

Im paying for potential.

If you combine the PS2 and PS3 numbers you have over half a million units. That doesn't sound like an unreasonable metric to me. Suprised not to see it mentioned.

Not unreasonable, but not really usable either. When you purchase a PS3 you're basically buying a PS2 as well, given backward compatibility. When you purchase a PS2, you don't get the PS3 games, and will have to purchase a PS3 in the future if necessary. So you can't really combine the #s in that way imo. For PS2 software sales it works out great. Not so much for PS3.

p.s.: Wii is the meteor that destroyed the world. PS2 is Tsar Bomba.

 

[Crayon]

True that, Natoma. All these sales numbers are pretty much useless.

As a matter of fact, they aren't really even interesting.

 

[TheChefO]

True that, Natoma. All these sales numbers are pretty much useless.

As a matter of fact, they aren't really even interesting.

? No no - combining nextgen sales with last gen isn't useful. Comparign nextgen to nextgen: interesting. Even more interesting is comparing reality to expectation.

 

[TheChefO]

That would mean that through the January NPD #s, Sony had shipped 1.5 Million consoles to the US; 1 million through christmas, 100k/week through 5 weeks of January. With ~950k sold, that's a lot of unsold consoles.

That's an understatement! Where's Waldo hiding 500,000 consoles?

 

[inefficient]

PS2 destroys the world. Still.

My PS3 is essentially a 600 dollar PS2 wireless controller.

It's also 60GB worth of memory cards!

60GB / 8 MB = 7,500 memory cards.
7,500 cards @ $15 a card = $112,500!

You have made a wise financial decision sir.

 

[Crayon]

? No no - combining nextgen sales with last gen isn't useful. Comparign nextgen to nextgen: interesting. Even more interesting is comparing reality to expectation.

You've got a point with the expectations to reality. That probably explains all the interest in the thread.

But as far as combining last gen and next gen..... I ask you: What happened to current gen?

Why arbitarily lable PS2 "last gen" and leave it out when it outsold everything else? It's what people are buying right now. It's in the mix. And it's competing. I don't mean to rain on the console war parade, but people are still sitting around playing on their 100 milion PS2s and that's just not very interesting.

 

[Crayon]

It's also 60GB worth of memory cards!

60GB / 8 MB = 7,500 memory cards.
7,500 cards @ $15 a card = $112,500!

You have made a wise financial decision sir.

Oh my shit!

I'm hella smart!

 

[Nesh]

This thread is becoming very entertaining

 

[djskribbles]

That would mean that through the January NPD #s, Sony had shipped 1.5 Million consoles to the US; 1 million through christmas, 100k/week through 5 weeks of January. With ~950k sold, that's a lot of unsold consoles. It would also support the anecdotal evidence that there are PS3s on store shelves across the nation.

where did you get the shipped numbers? are you sure theres 1.5m units in the US alone? that seems a little high imo. but that also seems too low to be for all of N/A.

 

[TheChefO]

It's also 60GB worth of memory cards!

60GB / 8 MB = 7,500 memory cards.
7,500 cards @ $15 a card = $112,500!

You have made a wise financial decision sir.

Much better deal than MS is offering:
$10,900 worth 64mb memory cards in the 20gb HDD.

@ Crayon - Current gen is still selling and people are still playing. But this market will die a very quick and painless death over the next year. Run a search, I did a breakdown on how Nextgen is killing last gen faster this time than last.

 

[patsu]

The 1 million/month figure of Sony was to manufacture ps3's but as has been said there is a difference between manufactured and shipped and sold. I do not think Sony was planning to manufacture them just to stack them in a warehouse though.

You're getting ahead of yourself. Shipment will continue at whatever estimated pace and transport cost. The channel has to hold some inventory. The actual retail numbers will usually track behind, but varies according to time of the year, availability of titles, etc.

Tracking at the shipment level also means you're get lot's of stock some month and fewer other times (due to the fluctuating consumer demand across months). This is called the Bull-whip effect. There is nothing wrong (yet) with shipping number being substantially higher than retail sales unless it's for an extended period of time.

e.g., In early Jan 2007, I counted > 611 Xbox 360s and 43 PS3s in 9 Bay Area stores, but their sales in Jan comes up to be roughly the same (Xbox sold 50,000 more but has wider distribution). _If_ the scenario is prevalent in other parts of US, this may mean that the channel actually holds more Xbox 360s than PS3s (i.e., Xbox 360 shipping number even higher than retail number). However this is no cause for concern unless the boxes do not move. Otherwise, someone may be guilty of channel stuffing.

 

[TheChefO]

You're getting ahead of yourself. Shipment will continue at whatever estimated pace and transport cost. The channel has to hold some inventory. The actual retail numbers will usually track behind, but varies according to time of the year, availability of titles, etc.

Tracking at the shipment level also means you're get lot's of stock some month and fewer other times (due to the fluctuating consumer demand across months). This is called the Bull-whip effect. There is nothing wrong (yet) with shipping number being substantially higher than retail sales unless it's for an extended period of time.

e.g., In early Jan 2007, I counted > 611 Xbox 360s and 43 PS3s in 9 Bay Area stores, but their sales in Jan comes up to be roughly the same (Xbox sold 50,000 more but has wider distribution). _If_ the scenario is prevalent in other parts of US, this may mean that the channel actually holds more Xbox 360s than PS3s (i.e., Xbox 360 shipping number even higher than retail number). However this is no cause for concern unless the boxes do not move. Otherwise, someone may be guilty of channel stuffing.

Agreed there is some wiggle room but that is the rub isn't it... What is going to keep that 1m/mo ps3 chain moving?

 

[Natoma]

where did you get the shipped numbers? are you sure theres 1.5m units in the US alone? that seems a little high imo. but that also seems too low to be for all of N/A.

Sony announced in January that they had shipped 1 million consoles to the US by Christmas. Then that link that was provided in my original quote stated that they have continued to ship 100k consoles to the US per week since the new year. That would be 1.5 million consoles in the US through the end of January.