Well, I don't think that 7.1 sound is a important factor for the large majority of customers…
NPD November 2008
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Well, I don't think that 7.1 sound is a important factor for the large majority of customers…
So, this month the 360 retook the 2nd spot behind Nintendo going from 200.000 units sold YTD behind the PS3, to 200.000 YTD sold ahead of the PS3. That's probably going to increase more next month, assuming no price-cut for the PS3.
Being in the U.S., that's still not a bad result for Sony. It's unfortunate that they couldn't afford a price-cut for these holidays, or the picture could have looked even more different. Nevertheless, the situation is by far hopeless for Sony. They will get that price-cut, and the 360 probably can't make many more signficant price-cuts from here on. Sony is still ahead in Europe and Japan in total sales I think, and the YTD still looks to be going to Sony. Apart from that PSP sales are very healthy everywhere - I don't think Sony have a lot to complain about right now, but they'll have to keep working towards that price-cut - we really need to see the system below 299, and I had hoped they'd have reached it before Christmas, but it seems it'll have to wait until March or so. It's a missed opportunity for sure, but if they couldn't afford it, they couldn't afford it.
Being in the U.S., that's still not a bad result for Sony. It's unfortunate that they couldn't afford a price-cut for these holidays, or the picture could have looked even more different. Nevertheless, the situation is by far hopeless for Sony. They will get that price-cut, and the 360 probably can't make many more signficant price-cuts from here on. Sony is still ahead in Europe and Japan in total sales I think, and the YTD still looks to be going to Sony. Apart from that PSP sales are very healthy everywhere - I don't think Sony have a lot to complain about right now, but they'll have to keep working towards that price-cut - we really need to see the system below 299, and I had hoped they'd have reached it before Christmas, but it seems it'll have to wait until March or so. It's a missed opportunity for sure, but if they couldn't afford it, they couldn't afford it.
woundingchaney
Regular
Given Sony's account of European sales, MS should pass them this month or next as far as total sales in Europe. Though this depends on just how accurate Sony's 300k figure is and when it was compiled, as they may even be behind MS in Europe now. I cant help but feel that Sony would list a "best possible" figure regarding their market share in a territory.
Though are we talking all of Europe or only mainland Europe??
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No. Here are the YTD:
360 - 3,295,200
PS3 - 2,818,800
Diff = 476,400
No "probably" next month either. It'll be another beatdown. The PS3 will likely be around 1mil behind in 2008 in the US.
I know that the NDP data focus on the American situation but when reading the remarks here for a second I had the feeling that America was the only market where Sony sells PS3’s. Luckily for Sony that isn’t the case.
From my European view I’m not that quite surprised that expensive goods like the PS3 doesn’t sell well in economies that are in very bad weather, even if I’m not really an economist and maybe not qualified enough.
When I worked for an American company that sold goods online in the US, I had the feeling that there was (for me I thought logical) correlation between the state of the American economy and what people wanted to spend on gifts/ luxurious goods.
I know that some tend to disagree that it has an impact related to the videogames industry , but I really don’t believe that when people (they even don’t need to be americans) are faced with increasing prices that they are likely to spend (how much does the PS3 cost in the US ?) 399$ ?
Hell Microsoft for years did one advertisement for the 360 in the form of a Gears of War ad. They totally disrespected the cultural differences here in Belgium with regards of languages. And for years they totally ignored all the complaints.
They now fixed it and they are bombarding Belgian Television with 360 ads where they are marketing heavy (in combination with games like fallout 3, prince of Persia,...) on the 150 euro cost.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
But is being behind 360 by 1mil a success or failure for sony this year? Given the pricepoint of the PS3 i would say its a great success!
thundermonkey
Newcomer
The unfortunate thing for Sony is every year spent behind MS in userbase is another year lost. The battle for second place in the console war is on... and Sony is left with little. They needed to be down to $299 or lower this fall.
They aren't. They will have no lasting impact on the generation because of it.
They were screwed regardless. They would have lost assloads of money with no guarantee of recouping that investment.
Sony backed themselves into a corner, and both MS and Nintendo are striking with scary accuracy.
Here are a couple things beyond the price (aka, they could do something about) that I think hurt PS3 this holiday:
The lineup was wrong, MS came in with Fable and Gears and Banjo, Banjo flopped, but Fable and Gears played to the hardcore. Sony's lineup (Mostly Resistance 2, LBP, and Motorstorm) imo failed them drastically, and the sales of those titles bear it out. LBP was never going to appeal to the hardcore imo. And unlike a lot of people, I was expecting LBP to not do well long before it came out, not just after the fact. LBP isn't aimed at the market that buys PS360, it's almost more of a Wii demographic aimed title. I cannot imagine most 17 year old males getting all that excited about LBP. Motorstorm is pretty hardcore, but for whatever reason it was a non-entity at retail. R2 was targeted at the right audience, unlike LBP imo, but it's inconsistent graphics probably really held it back.
I think Sony needed either KZ2 or MGS4 this holiday. Badly. Either they should have tried to hold MGS4 back from June until Nov, or bumped KZ2 up. Obviously the former is a lot more possible, as you dont want to release an unfinished game. I'm not sure how that would have went down with Konami, but they should have made it happen.
Second, why the heck was MS throwing in 2 free games, 1 with the Arcade (+the usual 5 Arcade freebies), and PS3 had nothing? People dont talk about it much, but it seems to me those holiday bundles MS does every year are probably a big factor with Joe Six Pack. At least last year Sony threw in Spiderman Blu Ray. Sony should have tossed in say Motorstorm 1 and Resistance 1.
I mean with the price high as we know, how on earth could Sony have not done something to sweeten the pot? Hell I'd throw in four games if I was them, you know, or being more realistic, 2 games and 2 Blu Rays sounds about right. I have a feeling the Japanese corporate leaders may have been the ones out of touch with things going down in the US there.
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Also Gears 2 sales have to be tagged as a bit disappointing. Lets look at a couple metrics. The first sold 1m it's first month into a install base of about 3 million. The second only sells 1.56 m into a install base of around 12m. Yes we all know sales dont increase linearly, but that is a bit disappointing, if you can call 1.56 milllion sales disappointing, anyway. Also, Halo sold about 3.3 m first month into a significantly lower install base (dont feel like running the numbers right now, but probably like 6-7 million) in 2007.
This makes me wonder why. The first thing that jumps to mind is, were people not as happy as thought with Gears 1? Strange, as Gears 1 multi remained around fourth on Major Nelson's most played list the entire two years until the sequel. Huh.
Gears 2 second month will be interesting. The first did another 800k IIRC it's Dec. The 2nd can become labeled a bit more of a success in my book perhaps if it pulls an unusually strong 2nd month.
The popularity of the COD series stuns me, for what I feel is a average at best single player
series. And here people claimed WaW would flop by virtue of not being from IW.
This makes me wonder why. The first thing that jumps to mind is, were people not as happy as thought with Gears 1? Strange, as Gears 1 multi remained around fourth on Major Nelson's most played list the entire two years until the sequel. Huh.
Gears 2 second month will be interesting. The first did another 800k IIRC it's Dec. The 2nd can become labeled a bit more of a success in my book perhaps if it pulls an unusually strong 2nd month.
The popularity of the COD series stuns me, for what I feel is a average at best single player
series. And here people claimed WaW would flop by virtue of not being from IW.
I can tell you why: Gears 1 sold more because of Gary Jules' Mad World.
This is something I keep hearing, and it's justified with nebulous terms like 'loss of mindshare' or 'betrayal'. There is no console war. There's three companies trying to make money. One of them's succeeding tremendously, one's only starting to see money and one's hemorrhaging. The advice you hear often repeated is that to stem the hemorrhage, Sony needs to... bleed more? Assume that Sony knows the profit/loss they make on each PS3 as well as the average return per console based on games.
The real problem is software sales.
Though Motorstorm 2 (yes, it was 2: Pacific Rift) failed to chart, naturally, but it did sell 1 million (but that includes bundles), but yeah, they just didn't strike a chord with any games.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
The launch windows for both Halo 3 and Gears 1 were not nearly as hostile as November 08 was, but yeah I was expecting a little bit higher number aswell.
In part, bad word of mouth. Matchmaking was, and maybe still is fairly broken. Gears also isn't as big a title as Halo 3, something I tried to say last month.
I didn't like Gears2 as much as 1, but I can't say my opinion matches anyone else's.
I think this title is more front-loaded. I think it'll do well, certainly, but Gears of War was an unknown, albeit a great-looking unknown. It was buoyed on great word-of-mouth.
Not me. I think the title may eventually pull a Tony Hawk if Activision isn't careful, but games sell on title recognition alone for 1-2 iterations, even if they're garbage (again, see Tony Hawk).
That said, I don't think WaW is going to pull a CoD4, which had a series of strong months based mainly on word of mouth. WaW is going to be more front-loaded.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I don't think anybody argued that it is AS big, people were talking about tiers and saying that Gears is big enough to be in the A tier, despite not being as big as Halo, but yeah looking at these sales it is clear that there is room between them.
I'd love to see how MS2 did 1million. It failed in the US and had very poor showings throughout the European charts. It Japanese sales are crap also. It's got no "legs" Is it *the* bundle throughout Europe? I'm in England right now, was previously in Venice, Rome, Paris and other parts on England. Checked out a few electronics stores and didn't see MS2 bundles or a big push for them.
There might be 1mil copies out there including sold to consumer, sold to retail in the form stand alone copies on shelves and bundles copies sitting in stores but 1mil copies in the hands of consumers, not buying it.
I'll believe Fallout's 4.7mil before I buy the 1mil sold to consumer PR piece.
Gears 2 also has to deal with CoD:WaW riding the CoD4 wave. That's huge and it clearly shows in the numbers as CoD:WaW sold 1.4! but yea, I expected atleast 2mil for Gears 2. December should be interesting. The word of mouth about it's MP issues also isn't helping whereas the fantastic MP setup of L4D helped it's sales.
Look, those are the numbers. From here. If you want to doubt them, please bring the evidence. They usually differentiate between shipped and sold, even if it's with clever PR-speak. Maybe Denny made a mistake by saying '1 million sales', but I'd like more than 'my trip to England tells me otherwise!'.
Yeah because PR rocks at telling the truth! I'm simply stating that during my visit there was no visibility to this magic bundle that pushed so much hardware and software in such little time. But hey, PR is there to make people feel better so by all means, have at it. On that note, congrats to Bethsada on 4.7million copies of Fallout 3 sold.
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