NPD April 2007

Of course it matters. Even if we disregard the whole finance part, the longer somebody waits to buy a console, the less will the potential earnings from sold games is going to be.

Yep, and not only that, this is getting to the whole crux of why poor sales now are an issue, and why I don't agree with people who say 'just wait until July / September / Christmas / 2008' Sony can't afford to wait. The longer these poor sales continue, the more titles will either go multi-platform or worse, canned. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but how long will it be? Console sales very much follow the cycle of
Code:
    ------> More Console Sales ------> Larger Install Base ------->  
    |                                                             |
    |                                                             |
    <-----------------------  More Games <-------------------------
Sony are currently slow in the sales which has a knock on effect on the others. If the PS3 was on price parity with the 360 it may not be an issue, but if you were going to buy a 360 or a PS3 as it stands now, and almost all the games were out on both, and there were no utterly compelling exclusives, which would you buy? This is why getting the price down to drive sales now is important.
 
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Does it matter though when people buy the PS3,as long as in the end they buy them? You say five years,why when business goes on indefinately? It seems to me at least that we have created these artificial and arbitrary time lines as to when a console must sell X numbers of unit's?

Additional issues with that:

Eventually presumably the next-gen comes along, and by and large "previous" gen consoles are forgotten. See GC and Xbox. PS2 has remained the strongest but even it has limited shelf life.

One real problem with an alledged 10 year PS3 is that it would be competing with Xbox3 and something like Wii2 (that is, if Sony chooses to not release PS4 in that time).
 
You probably have to look at those 10 years as in: We keep it in production for 10 years, but after 5 years or so we'll release a new model. Thats what they did with psx too. They released ps2 but keep psx in production and they probably wanted to do the same with ps2 but as it still sells well they didnt push it to the background a but like with the psx.
 
Not totally related, but I still found it interesting...

Looking at highly inaccurate NZ release date charts,
the numbers break down like so:

No. of titles 'expected' for release by the end of the year*... Meaning they have a NZ release date, even if it's wildly inaccurate (fifa 07 PS3 is apparently being released a few weeks before fifa 08 PS3)
Code:
360 - 70
PS3 - 32
Wii - 22
*not counting collectors editions, downloadable games etc

Take it with a bag of salt of course.
Having no official Nintendo New Zealand means Wii is a bit of a flop over here :no:

It's funny really. Over here I'd expect the average person would be more likly to know what the PSP is than the DS.
 
Canadian NPD doesn't have a home so I'll just put it here.

Pokemon Diamond--DS--Nintendo--24,900
Pokemon Pearl--DS--Nintendo--19,500
Mario Party 8--Wii--Nintendo--17,700
Wii Play w/ Wii Remote--Wii--Nintendo--16,000
Spider-Man 3--PS2--Activision--14,500
Forza Motorsport 2--Xbox 360--Microsoft--12,600
Super Paper Mario--Wii--Nintendo--10,000
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars--Xbox 360--Electronic Arts--9,500
Spider-Man 3--Xbox 360--Activision--9,200
Guitar Hero II--Xbox 360--Activision--9,000


Wii - 37,300
DS - 35,900
PS2 - 18,200
PSP - 15,000
360 - 12,300
PS3 - 6,500
GBA - 6,100
 
C&C3 has been doing some solid numbers on 360, and IIRC well above the PC version. Bodes well for the strategy genre on consoles, which is good news imo.
 
May NPD due to be posted today around 3:30 PT

predictions:

Wii: 298,000
X360: 158,000
PS3: 74,000

Low. Except maybe for PS3.

Going by Vgcharts and Pachter estimates, it's looking roughly like in my opinion:

~350k Wii
~210-220k 360
~70's k PS3 (possibly even 60's...)
 
Oh great..it appears there was yet another problem at NPD and all we have are half-arsed numbers at the moment.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16507
Console hardware was a real driver of growth in May as sales climbed 79 percent to $221.4 million. Overall in hardware, the Nintendo DS (at this point, not surprisingly) took top honors... again. Nintendo sold through 423K units during the month. This was followed by Wii, PSP, PS2, Xbox 360, and then PS3. Unfortunately, NPD could not provide a complete hardware sales breakdown as of press time, but directionally it is interesting to see the PSP outselling the PS2, 360 and PS3.

So DS=423k>Wii>PSP>PS2>360>PS2 is about all we know so far. plus:

Here's the complete top ten list (ranked by units), as provided by NPD.

1. Pokemon Diamond—DS—Nintendo

2. Mario Party 8—Wii—Nintendo

3. Spider-Man 3—PS2—Activision

4. Pokemon Pearl—DS—Nintendo

5. Wii Play w/remote—Wii—Nintendo

6. Forza Motorsport 2—Xbox 360—Microsoft

7. Guitar Hero II w/guitar—Xbox 360—Activision

8. Spider-Man 3—Xbox 360—Activision

9. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars—Xbox 360—Electronic Arts

10. Guitar Hero II w/guitar—PS2—Activision
 
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