NPD March 2009

[DuckThor Evil]

However, after about the same amount of time on the market, the PS2 had done about 30m and the PS3 is now at about, what, 21 or 22m? So it's not exactly in a position where it can never make that jump to PS2-like figures.

That's about as incorrect as you can get, because the way those consoles launched. PS2 figures are lowered because at first it only launched in Japan and much later elsewhere. If you do a proper launch aligned comparison and compare PS2 and PS3 in each region separately, you'll get a much different and honest results. According to vgchartz the differences are 5M in others, 11M in America and 6.7M in Japan. All in favour of PS2, so in reality the difference is about 21.5M vs 44M...

 

[Rotmm]

You're probably right, and that does paint the Life-to-Date PS3 sales in a worse light I suppose.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Is there any possibility that piracy is hurting sales of action games on Wii and DS? Games like GTA: CW would appeal to the same demographic that has enough sophistication to pirate games. There was a thread a while back on console security, and Wii's security is apparently almost trivial to break. We all know about commercial products that are designed to circumvent DS security. A friend of mine, big Nintendo fan, recently bought one of those cards and has stopped buying DS games entirely.

 

[obonicus]

Is there any possibility that piracy is hurting sales of action games on Wii and DS? Games like GTA: CW would appeal to the same demographic that has enough sophistication to pirate games. There was a thread a while back on console security, and Wii's security is apparently almost trivial to break. We all know about commercial products that are designed to circumvent DS security. A friend of mine, big Nintendo fan, recently bought one of those cards and has stopped buying DS games entirely.

I think there's the possibility, but you don't get people to accept that piracy hurts game sales on the PC, so I don't think you'll see much consensus on how much damage is done.

 

[eastmen]

You're probably right, and that does paint the Life-to-Date PS3 sales in a worse light I suppose.

Lets also not forget that last gen you had what 150m ps2s , 25m xbox and 25m gamecubes give or take ? Thats 200m user base in 7 years or so of sales.

Right now you have 22m ps3s , 30m xbox 360s and what 50m wii's so your already looking at 102m units sold . Thats 4 years of sales vs 7 or 8 years of sales last gen. Your also looking at a system that is now 3 yeasr into its life and hasn't recieved a price drop and two other expensive systems .

I don't think you can call the ps3 a slow start because others have launched past it. The 360 is 5m more sold than the original xbox and has done it a year faster , the wii has sold at least double what the gamecube sold. The ps3 is just doing poorly and I think we can all trace back to the reasons why.

Also it really doesn't matter if the ps3 has had a slow start. The 360 hasn't . The 360 launched a year earlier also and so there are many people who have had one since 2005 and i'm sure they will want a enw system in 2011. You also have to factor in that a system in 2011 launched at the same price point as the 360 (300/400) would crap all over both the 360 and ps3. So saying the ps3 had a slow start may not be in its best intrest even if its true. No matter how advanced a system is it will never compare with a 5 year newer piece of hardware introduced at close to its original selling point and it would be very hard for a ps3 to compete with a true next gen system. Esp if its still priced inbetween a 360/wii and a xbox next / wii next. Sure you can point to the ps2 and its sales during the first few years of this gen. However that was a system that had 150m hardware units out there and thousands of games. The ps3 doesn't have that advantageb and i don't really see how in the next two years it will gain that advantage.

 

[dobwal]

Lets also not forget that last gen you had what 150m ps2s , 25m xbox and 25m gamecubes give or take ? Thats 200m user base in 7 years or so of sales.

Right now you have 22m ps3s , 30m xbox 360s and what 50m wii's so your already looking at 102m units sold . Thats 4 years of sales vs 7 or 8 years of sales last gen. Your also looking at a system that is now 3 yeasr into its life and hasn't recieved a price drop and two other expensive systems .

1.PlayStation 2 144 million
2.PlayStation 102.49 million
3.NES 61.91 million
4.Wii 50 million
5.Super NES 49.1 million
6.N64 32.93 million
7.Atari 2600 30 million
8.Genesis 29 million
9.Xbox 360 28 million
10.Xbox 24 million
11.GameCube 21.74 million
12.PlayStation 3 21.3 million
13.Saturn 17 million or 9.5 million
14.Master System 13 million
15.Dreamcast 10.6 million

If next gen doesn't arrive until late 2011, we have a chance that all three console from this generation making up 3 of the top 7 selling consoles of all time.

The Wii is at 50 million roughly 2 years after release with its original price tag. It has yet to explore demand at lower price points. It could rival PS2 in sales in 5 to 6 years. The 360 is at #9 and will be at #6 before year's end and has a chance to post more sales than the SNES. The PS3 is currently at 12 but given the time left in the gen it will jump above the N64 and definitely has a great chance of being a 40+ million console. We could see 225-250 million consoles sold this gen.

We haven't really even tested demand for sub $200 console and yet we are already have 100 million consoles in 3 years.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Is there any possibility that piracy is hurting sales of action games on Wii and DS? Games like GTA: CW would appeal to the same demographic that has enough sophistication to pirate games. There was a thread a while back on console security, and Wii's security is apparently almost trivial to break. We all know about commercial products that are designed to circumvent DS security. A friend of mine, big Nintendo fan, recently bought one of those cards and has stopped buying DS games entirely.

This isn't all that uncommon actually. Pretty much everyone I know, once they start pirating pretty much never bother to buy anything ever again unless there is absolutely no way they can pirate it.

Doesn't matter if they are making over 100k a year or only 10k a year. We have discussions based on it, but as we're all friends to some degree or another it hardly ever goes beyond that.

I always love how they always try to defend their actions as they are just trying it before they buy it, yet they never buy any of them, even if they rave on and on about how awesome a game such and such was. /sigh. Or they complain they don't buy it because of the DRM, and yet they don't buy games without DRM...

Anyways, being that this is purely anecdotal. I'd say roughly 70% of the people that I know that game frequently don't buy a single game that they play other than MMORPGs. A few of them have also had 1 or 2 Xbox Live Gold accounts banned.

Which I find amusing. They'll pay for Xbox Live Gold. But they won't pay for the games that they play on there regularly.

Anyway, the problem is that there really isn't a way to quantify the impact that piracy has. Is is it possible that due to how easy it is to hack a Wii, that piracy could explain the much lower than expected sales of games and attach rates? Sure. Is there any way to know for sure? Not really...

Fortunately for Nintendo they actually make money off consoles, so that offsets to some extent how painful the losses to piracy are.

Regards,
SB

 

[catisfit]

We shipped 1.7 million Xbox 360 consoles during the third quarter of fiscal year 2009

NPD for this period: 1,030,000
Media Create for this period: 132,647

 

[fearsomepirate]

This isn't all that uncommon actually. Pretty much everyone I know, once they start pirating pretty much never bother to buy anything ever again unless there is absolutely no way they can pirate it.

I pirated games when I was a kid because I didn't know any better (pre-Internet days, we'd load up floppies with all kinds of good stuff and trade). It wasn't until college and that whole Napster thing blew up that I realized, oh yeah, I guess there's a reason you're supposed to buy this stuff, isn't there?

I won't say I've been absolutely perfect over the last 7 years since then, but I do think outside of being convinced it's actually wrong, pirates don't stop. This same friend has now figured out how to download movies of Bit Torrent and play them on his 360 and has quit renting and buying DVDs as well.

 

[Rangers]

NPD for this period: 1,030,000
Media Create for this period: 132,647

Seems like they actually shipped a little lite then. That only leaves 540k for the whole rest of the world (even beyond Europe including Canada, Australia etc). I suppose they had a few left over from the 6 million they shipped in the 4th quarter 08. But it seems like they could push the shipped number up a bit in the upcoming quarters, possibly.

360 really seems to be starting to hit on all cylinders. In last weeks chart track UK top 40 there were 15 360 games, 7 each Wii and PS3. 360 had more in the top 40 than Wii and PS3 combined. 360 is also showing unusual strength in the NPD top 20 lately. It seems to be able to easily land more titles on the charts than Wii even when selling at a rate of ~50% that hardware. Let alone if that figure can creep upward.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It makes one wonder if part of this is that it's slightly harder/more risky to play pirated games online on X360. Possibility of being banned for example. Thus encouraging some people to buy a game who otherwise might not.

I know for example on xbox-scene (great resource for turning your old Xbox into a media center device) there's copious warnings about playing backups online. And some people go so far as to actually purchase 2 xboxs. One to play online with originals and one to play offline with backups.

Regards,
SB

 

[liolio]

I had quiet a good laugh with this PR:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ps3-to-be-dominant-in-3-5-years-says-reeves
I'm not sure it's the proper place to post this link but anyway it's quiet funny to the point I wonder to open a new topic like "topic of the horrendous PR from hell"
I could be seriously fun as we have serious contenders bot on MS and Sony side only Nintendo seems to stuck to higher standard.

 

[Nesh]

He is talking about the PAL territories only I think. A territory where the PS3 does very well and in some areas sell more than the 360 despite the high price. So who knows?

Worldwide though? Sounds hard

 

[liolio]

I think he speaks about worldwide figure, the ps3 and 360 are pretty close to each other in Europe (in non north america/japan regions) Ps3 could take the lead way ealier than that in theses regions.
What made me laugh was the timeline 2011/13, it's so far away from now. By this time 360 and Wii are likely to have slow down and next systems from both Ms and Nintedo could be out, there is no point in dominating these outdated systems.
But I wasn't to discuss that seriously, Reeves leaves and I'm not sure that is the kind of PR others sony executives like to hear 'we will be back on top... in 3/5 years" It's really unpolitically correct imo.