NPD August 2007

Typo

For each million games sold = gamers have spent 60 million $

 

I think that it will still be released in PC but I am not sure.

They were canned long time ago, most time when a game that is in an early stage of the development is canned they just "stop talking about it".

What 360 list? I thought that you were talking about third party exclusive support that isn't based on the game being payed by Sony but in PS3's merits.

 

No offense Chef, but you "call" lot's of things.
For Example
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1040415#post104041
Your posts 26 and 31 in that thread are very doom and Gloom for MS and victory dance for Sony. If one calls everything, then it's natural that one sometimes hits the spot also.

MS's great software is really pushing Sony into a corner. Blu-ray adoption is a big risk for Sony as it's against DVD, HD-DVD and digital distribution. It's possible that they put too much fate on a single horse. FF13 and GT5 have some catching up to do.

 

PC is not a console.

So, I guess Project Zero IV, Forbidden Siren 3, etc. have also been canned, because developers haven't been talking about them.

It just seems every time there's talk about PS3 exclusives, people want to exclude this and that from the list, because "it's coming to PC as well", "it's only a timed exclusive", "it will come to 360 also" (although there's nothing concrete to support such claims), "it's published by Sony", "it's a 1st party title".

 

I think he was talking about 3rd party exclusive support, period.

 

I'm inclined to watch the projected timeline of the console along with the pricing. I assume that the pricepoint of the PS3 is meant to reach the same low price eventually as the PS2 and PS1 did, and that this has been foreseen from day one. The real problems for Sony would come from the following scenarios:

- they cannot achieve their timecurve, i.e. cannot reach a low enough pricepoint in a reasonable time-frame
- other consoles take their market space

Right now, it's still very early days to predict how well they are doing. I could imagine that their price-curve is perhaps delayed because of the blue laser stuff, but that's about it.

On the market space part, whether or not they have had true competition depends on how these consoles have sold into their market. With the current difference in price, the Wii is only taking away bits of PS3s marketshare right now insomuch as people would have otherwise bought a PS3, and I don't see that. Then the question is whether or not the Wii has taken away marketshare from the PS3 by the time the PS3 hits that same pricepoint, and while I suspect that yes, the Wii will take away a bit of the PS3, the Wii is also expanding the market and appealing to gamers who have not previously owned a PS2, or even a console. Etc.

Gotta go now, but I think people keep oversimplifying the discussion all the time.

 

Hey I am a PS3/Sony fan, It's just that I am not very optimistic about it's future. Sega stopped mentioning Fifth Phantom Saga two years ago after showing fotage in the TGS 2005 and I remember someone talking about Kurayami being canned after Grasshopper stopped talking about it when listing their projects announced or not.

I would like to be proved wrong thought.

 

x360 does good, especially the software. I really think in the end it payed of for MS to launch early and put up with the problems. I would like to see EU sales though, supposedly theyre not doing alot better than ps3 in the EU (exept for the UK).

Sony obviously has a problem. Not selling alot of consoles doesnt have to be such a big problem as long as you sell software. But they are not selling any software either.

Nintendo, well wii is selling awsome. But where is the software? as a wii owner im getting a bit angry by it. Its obvious that the system has enough to offer. Ofcourse its not ps3/x360 in terms of hardware but its not a turbo n64 either. I think the lack of (quality) 3rd party software might is a bit of a visious circle. Wii is underpowerd so devs dont pay any attention to gfx at all (and in most cases they dont pay any attention to the rest of the game either), but most people dont want to buy something that looks like it has 0 effort put into it. So the games sell bad and 3rd parties think they cant make cash on wii with a decent project. Ubi is the proof for this. They said they would support wii big time but they didnt release anything other than absolute worthless crap for it. After 9 months RS is still by far their best effort. But in the same time they made a shitload of money on releasing shit on wii/ds and use it to fund x360/ps3 games instead of making a decent wii game...

I still think 3rd party can sell good on Wii, but it has to be quality software and not stuff like madden08 where all the players are the same size because apparently they couldnt fit different size players on the dvd... while the x360 version has...

 

A silly question to those that think the PS3 won't finish last this gen... when do you think exactly it will take the #2 spot? I'm asking for a month and year here... 2008? 2009? I honestly can't see it, since it's been beaten every month non-stop since launch... and it's an uphill battle from here on in.

 

Then there's two of us. Although I must say I've partly lost my interest for the current generation. Mainly because of the absence of horror games, the increasing censorship, and most importantly due to the severe disappointment caused by the recently revealed Silent Hill 5 information. Here's for hoping Kurayami hasn't been cancelled.

And sorry for derailing the thread.

 

I think you should ask that in the PS3 sales prediction thread, i'd be interested in the answers too when you consider that 18% of respondents said it would do better than 100 million units.

Expanding on your points, it's worth considering that the result of being beaten every month is, naturally, that the gap is wider than it ever was between it and its competition. Not only that but it would be reasonable to suggest there is a fixed end point to the generation. While we don't know when that is yet, it does exist, and every month that passes is one less month PS3 has to make up that ground. Net result being, Sony need to get things in order and fast, because the number of additional units they need to sell vs the competition is increasing every month and soon it just won't be reasonable to suggest they'll do it in any reasonable timeframe

EDIT: As for the sales numbers, I just want to make a couple of points. Firstly, decent 360 numbers, and i don't really see them dropping this side of Christmas. Second,wrt PS3 i see a lot of people saying things like 'Just wait until next month' or 'Wait until November when Uncharted comes out' or something like that. A lot of these games (Haze, Uncharted, Lair, Warhawk etc) seem to be new franchises. Look at the top 20 software sales and tell me how many new franchises you see? I count 4 (including Wii Play which is bundled isn't it) and only one of them is a big seller. These are all unknown titles to a consumer that typically buys franchises and sequels. I would be interested in people's feedback here, i mean there are plenty of deserving new franchises on all machines, but really it seems like some people put a little too much faith in a title that could, for all it's technical merits, flop on release, and to use those unknown titles as a reason for increased sales, or even evidence of a price cut seems a little bit hasty.

 

Does anyone dare to calculate how much time (month) it would take to Sony to match Ms user base in US? (smells like a dead horse... )

 

At the current numbers until the end of times. Everything else is not calculation, but speculation. There's nothing you can calculate here. You'd need to assume a certain gap in sales numbers Sony could achieve, etc.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. A couple of things you said made me think that the market for 3rd party success on the Wii is indeed shifting towards publishers that can be more agile:

It almost sounds like the console gaming industry was starting to follow the Hollywood blockbuster movie model (big budgets chasing a potential hit franchise), where the Wii is creating a platform for more "Indie" games. That's not to say the Indie games will be lower quality - some of the most critically acclaimed (and award-winning films) in the current Hollywood environment have been so-called "Indie" films; but they may not have the big budget special effects like the Star Wars film franchise.

This is a good point, but I think it assumes that hardware costs go down relative to the price of the console. In the case of the Wii, I don't know that hardware costs will decline rapidly.

Another good point, but the perception of necessary support for the "old (cheaper) tech" depends on the purchase price, doesn't it? If I buy a $400-$600 television, yes, I want it to last for a while. But if I buy a $200-$300 mp3 player, my time horizon as a customer may be shorter. A skilled company might even persuade me to upgrade my purchase on a more regular basis, particularly around the holidays.

I think the market for the big budget, graphic-showcasing games will always be there, but I believe Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" bet was that the long term growth of the industry (and their ultimate survival) depended on creating a platform that favored their strengths (smaller, more agile, more able to focus on specific niches) rather than a market model that would increasingly favor industry heavyweights with billions of dollars from other corporate divisions to subsidize big bets (MS and Sony).

 

Meh - I used to enjoy the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD topics more than the monthly sales bitching...

 

i think the earliest the PS3 could take 2nd spot is early 2009. if you want a month and year, ill say January 2009. if Sony can keep the PS3's price competitively with the 360 until then and keep all of their big third-party exclusives like Tekken 6, FFXIII, FFXIII vs and MGS4 to add to their first party games like GT5 and KZ2, they can build some momentum going into the holiday season of 08. i think momentum is all Sony needs to get back into this race.

 

My point was more like : at this point even if the ps3 sells as well as the Wii it will happen really really late.

Shortly, it will never happen...

I know One's post is right, and it has to be expected, but I can't believe that Sony messed up some much.
They have not only lose US but by an impressive margin...

 

Out of curiosity: How many MP3 units should Nintendo have moved in NA for there not to be a problem?

Considering Bioshock has a 50% higher installed base to sell to and had 11 days of sales included in the numbers (vs. 5 for MP3) does that indicate that the Xbox 360 has a problem selling to the traditional gamer demographic too?

 

Won't happen...

Like StefanS said it's up to speculation but by witch margin Sony needs to outsell Ms and Nintendo (we don't witch will be first after christmass 2007 /later) to become 2nd by 2009?
360 and Wii are likely to have pretty even marketshare in US.
It's not about become second but match nintendo and MS.

At this point it's mathematicly a dead horse... such a huge margin between Sony and its opponents is just out of this world.

 

Hmm, if you give them another 14 months or so that means they'll have to sell something like 400k more than MS does every month and thats alot even with those titels.