PS3 Launch Outsells Xbox 360 Launch?*

[Nesh]

Sony today announced that they have sold 1 million Playstation 3s in North America since the launch of the console six weeks ago.

That makes the Playstation 3 the fastest selling home console Sony has ever launched.

Microsoft sold 600,000 of their Xbox 360s from their November launch to the second week in January.

"SCEA went to great lengths to help meet demand for PS3, including airlifting systems into North America on a weekly basis to ensure a steady stream of units were available to consumers throughout the holiday season," said Jack Tretton, president and CEO, SCEA. "The fact that we were able to reach the one-million mark faster than our top-selling platform, the PS2, further validates the strength of the PlayStation brand and our belief that consumers are ready to experience true high-definition gaming." ... "Reaching the one million mark for PS3 is the first of many major milestones for us as we head into a new year. Even more impressive, is that we were able to accomplish this feat while successfully managing two other gaming platforms--PS2 and PSP," said Tretton. "With three PlayStation platforms now available to gamers, 2007 will be about software and delivering innovative, new experiences and award-winning franchises to consumers, both through retail and through our online PLAYSTATION Network."

Wow. Maybe all of those PS3s sitting around have more to do with ramped up production than dwindling desire. Brian Crecente

LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2007 -At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 in Las Vegas, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) today announced that more than one million units of its recently launched PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system have been sold in to the retail channel in North America. The company successfully achieved this milestone by the end of the 2006 calendar year, just six weeks after the product was introduced on November 17, 2006.
PS3 has been selling-out at retail outlets across North America since it was launched. This high consumer demand drove the PS3 to reach the one-million mark before its predecessors, the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system and the PS one game console - both systems have shipped more than 213 million units of hardware and more than 2.1 billion pieces of software worldwide.

Heh very ironic considering the impression out there that the PS3 isnt selling or its doing bad. It could have performed better than the 360's launch actually.
These numbers could be shipped instead of sold though. But then again 600,000 360's (shipped or sold) VS probably more than 700,000 PS3's sold (instead of the 1 million mark in the article) still shows that the PS3 hasnt fallen behind. 360 was launched worldwide too unlike the PS3.

Btw I am surprised these news are in Kotaku

 

[xmu]

I was just checking out the same thing. On kotaku.com the press release says 1m sold and on 1up.com they talk about shipment figures. Sigh

 

[Tap In]

Yes it is SONY Shipped, meaning that it has left their factories to warehouses (MS shipped means out to retailers) but impressive nonetheless as they will be sold soon after reaching the stores.

bodes well for the EU launch.

(01-07) 16:57 PST (AP) --
In an important early look at the pivotal holiday sales season, Sony Corp. said it met its goal of shipping 1 million PlayStation 3 consoles to North America in 2006 despite ongoing production problems with the still hard-to-find video game system.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2007/01/07/financial/f141249S93.DTL

 

[Mintmaster]

How many consoles you sell at launch is all about production ability, not demand. The PS2 did not have this kind of availability AFAIK.

The reason that people are concerned about PS3 sales is that with fairly widespread availability now, the pent-up demand has already dissipated, and higher supply probably wouldn't have sold more consoles. This past month XBox 360 had no pent-up demand because it's been out a year already, yet its sales still matched or exceeded the PS3's.

True, PS3 is only available in NA and Japan right now, but it's still almost shocking.

 

[Bad_Boy]

bodes well for the EU launch.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2007/01/07/financial/f141249S93.DTL

Yeah, I'd say it bodes very well. Everything has been pointing to march for Europe and at this point I'm really expecting a specific Europe date to be announced soon (hopefully during CES).

Heres GameSpots coverage on it:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6163828.html?tag=latestnews;title;0

Dille also set a new goal for the company in the keynote. He said that Sony hopes to ship 6 million PS3s worldwide by the end of March. The electronics giant will launch the PS3 in several new regions that month, including Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia/Asia.

 

[Tap In]

more

Sony (SNE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shipped 1 million of its new PS3 consoles to North America by the end of 2006, as planned, but did so by diverting units from Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment America Chief Executive Jack Tretton, told Reuters in an interview ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

wow.... NA must be serious business to sony.... shocked they would continue to short Japan.

Sony says it sold two games for each PS 3 sold and that it expects the tie ratio to increase over time.

Otzman said that Sony's worldwide numbers will be released later for the PS 3, but she said the company still believes it can make its worldwide target of 6 million shipped by March 31, 2007. She said "Resistance: Fall of Man" was the top title and Madden NFL 2007 was No. 2.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5273124&postcount=183

and rumor has it that December NPD for PS3 will be around 550,000

 

[Rolf N]

Heh very ironic considering the impression out there that the PS3 isnt selling or its doing bad.

"All's fair In love and PR"

Btw I am surprised these news are in Kotaku

Why? It isn't so much, err, partisanship (*disinfects tongue*) that makes the Kotaku so ... eww, it's the promotion of controversy at any cost, to drive up their page hits, to drive enraged people into their community system, which means yet more page hits and yet more controversy.

Can't you see how that little higher number shipped vs little lower number sold is a, again, excellent material for two fronts bashing their respective heads in?
*grabs a heavy lower branch*
And can't you see how other, more secular news outlets report the outcome in a fashion that isn't as polarizing?

 

[Tap In]

Can't you see how that little higher number shipped vs little lower number sold is a, again, excellent material for two fronts bashing their respective heads in?
*grabs a heavy lower branch*

or.... we could ignore the temptation, digest it logically for what the numbers really mean (just manufacturing and business) and be polite to each other in an effort to have a friendly discussion of the news, the business and the technology.

It's a choice really. :smile:

 

[Acert93]

How many consoles you sell at launch is all about production ability, not demand.

I don't know why a number of posters have a problem understanding this. We are also now hearing silly comments like it outpacing the PS2 and making assessments about how this "proves" BDR was the right choice and consumers will pay for it, etc. I think the consensus this summer was Sony would sell every PS3 they made in the first 3 or 4 months, namely the 6M they promised by March 31st, 2007. They have a staggering clientbase and an equally impressive brand and literally outsold MS and Nintendo last gen by more than a 2:1 ration world wide. And yet people get stuck on production ability and availability. As I pointed out the PS3 sales thread -- where this probably should be -- the comparison of NA only also ignores the different scopes of the launches. Based on the most recent Japanese numbers and extrapolating for the last week of December and adding in the 1M NA sales, the PS3 has shipped ~1.4M-1.45M units. The 360 did 1.5M in Japan, NA, and Europe.

But all the number wrangling is pointless because both launches (all three including Wii) were production limited.

Next thing you know people are counting the days in the launch year, and dividing the units sold by days to get an average sales metric to compare

 

[Rolf N]

or.... we could ignore the temptation, digest it logically for what the numbers really mean (just manufacturing and business) and be polite to each other in an effort to have a friendly discussion of the news, the business and the technology.

It's a choice really. :smile:

Err, sure. I didn't even "boo" nor "hurray" yet in any shape or form, in regards to the info itself
I just wanted to amend that any news entering your system from the Kotaku's direction should pass through a cooldown stage. It's good that the numbers are disseminated. Who doesn't love transparency. The social engineering OTOH is not so nice and also happens to counteract the transparency.
Other news outlets will give you shipped vs shipped, and soon (once December NPD makes its wider rounds) sold-through vs sold-through. We can take them nice and easy.
Letting ourselves be drawn into the Kotaku's semantic fringe, while much more directly comparable figures will be everywhere soon, is a recipe for avoidable stress.

 

[Rangers]

Honestly this probably puts PS3 and 360 first two months about even. microsoft announced they shipped 1.5m WW last DEC 31. Now we have sony saying 1m in NA in the same time. I dont recall exact media create PS3 sales in japan to date but I believe it was in the 300k range a week or two ago. So basically, assuming Japan is another 500k shipped, the numbers are similar. I could even see Sony announcing the 2m WW and the actual numbers being similar, as the definition of Sony's shipped is alledgedly looser.

Microsoft seemed to ship more at the tail end of the month though. PS3 will out-NPD 360 by a small margin. PS3 definitly seemed to ship more and have more replenishment available in mid month, when they were most needed, than I recall 360.

 

[London Geezer]

Mmmm... this sounds much like...

Hey guys, we are selling REALLY well!!! Seriously, i mean if you forget about the PS2 and the PSP, the PS3 is our fastest selling console!! Ain't we cool?? So, we're doing SOOO well that you can be confident in our product. Really, can't you see how many people are buying our console, even at this price? We're sure that if you stretch your budget just a liiitle bit more, you can also afford a PS3!! Really, price is totally a non-issue here, believe us, cause we're selling so many even at this price point!!

 

[avaya]

AFAIK Sony's shipped refers to finished machines at their manufacturing plants in Japan and Suzhou China (ASUS)

Microsoft and Nintendo count shipped as products that have been delivered to retail. The use of the word pipeline is significant.

Very disappointing numbers though. If demand still hasn't been reached, it looks like Japan got the absolute shaft on consoles but I suppose Sony had to do this to foster the BD base in North America

 

[Nesh]

"All's fair In love and PR"Why? It isn't so much, err, partisanship (*disinfects tongue*) that makes the Kotaku so ... eww, it's the promotion of controversy at any cost, to drive up their page hits, to drive enraged people into their community system, which means yet more page hits and yet more controversy.

Can't you see how that little higher number shipped vs little lower number sold is a, again, excellent material for two fronts bashing their respective heads in?
*grabs a heavy lower branch*
And can't you see how other, more secular news outlets report the outcome in a fashion that isn't as polarizing?

Well if you check the last part of my post you will see that I underestimated the most likely PR 1 million figure to 700,000 which sounds more possible and I think PS3 has reached and surpassed that figure according to various sites estimating the units sold so far.

Which again is a good indication

As for Kotaku it usually announced the negative side of whatever PS3 which sounds more surprising to people than telling the positive about a brand which was succesfull for 2 generations

 

[Platon]

We will have a very couple of interesting months ahead. Now that the holidays are over and with them the bying silly season, it will be interesting to see how the PS3 sells, will it continue to sale like crazy, or are the anecdotal reports on PS3 being on shelfs for a while before being sold the start of a trend...

 

[tuna]

AFAIK Sony's shipped refers to finished machines at their manufacturing plants in Japan and Suzhou China (ASUS)

LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2007 -At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 in Las Vegas, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) today announced that more than one million units of its recently launched PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system have been sold in to the retail channel in North America.

Is this SCEA's press release or some other report?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Yes it is SONY Shipped, meaning that it has left their factories to warehouses (MS shipped means out to retailers) but impressive nonetheless as they will be sold soon after reaching the stores.

How come Sony's sold suddenly is different from Microsoft's sold?
In a previous thread, if I recall correctly, it was agreed Microsoft "sold" means those units from the warehouses to the retail. As said by scooby-dooby, for instance.

MS has already explicitly defined their sales figures. They report 'sales' as consoles that have been purchased by retailers and left the main warehouses, whereas sony's report shipments to the main warehouses.

It clearly says

more than one million units of its recently launched PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system have been sold in to the retail channel in North America

So, it's sold, not shipped. Ok? Or am I confused again

 

[Ginko]

Where did they get those 360 numbers? Microsoft's official end of 2005 report showed 900,000 sold in to U.S. retail; 1.5 million sold worldwide. In any case, Sony probably did sell more in to retail, but the sell through to consumers is yet to be determined.

 

[one]

Where did they get those 360 numbers? Microsoft's official end of 2005 report showed 900,000 sold in to U.S. retail; 1.5 million sold worldwide. In any case, Sony probably did sell more in to retail, but the sell through to consumers is yet to be determined.

Where did you find those figures? NPD estimates 600,000 units as the sales and Michael Pachter estimates 800,000 as the shipment. As it was almost sold out in the US in 2005 as you know, you can assume the 600,000 figures wouldn't be far from the actual shipment.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-01-23-xbox-demand_x.htm

In the short term, prospects don't look good. Microsoft initially hoped to have shipped as many as 3 million systems by the end of February. But by the end of the year, Microsoft had shipped only about 1 million worldwide (about 800,000 to the USA and 100,000 each to Europe and Japan), according to estimates from analyst Michael Pachter with investment firm Wedbush Morgan Securities.

The NPD Group estimates that Microsoft sold 600,000 systems from Nov. 22 to Dec. 31. In comparison, it sold 1.4 million of the original Xbox systems in the first two months of 2001. "That was a new brand, and certainly now that it's established with a very loyal following and given the amount of hype and buzz they created, that is one barometer of what possibly could have been," says NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Wiki is your friend...

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/26/microsoftq2_2006/