PS3 Launch Outsells Xbox 360 Launch?*

That's an exaggeration. From what I saw, and I occasionally check - just out of curiosity, what happened was the bottom completely dropped out of the PS3 ebay market about 1 week before Xmas. The 4 digit prices was just for a couple of days (pre and launch day).

After that, the 60GB went for about $800-850 and the 20GB went for about $600-700. The 60GB price tanked about a week before Xmas, and the 20GB about 1 week before that. It's funny, some sellers apparently didn't get the memo and still were listing with high reserves that no one will ever meet, or ridiculous four digit buy-it-now prices.

 

True.... the story of Nintendo and the Wii is Academy Award material.... "I laughed , I cried "

 

Bundling Wiisports was genius. So far, I have 2 friends who tried it and are now looking for a Wii. These are people who never owned consoles and don't normally play video games. My 360 has never done that.

 

I agree. They know themselves and their competitions very well. The Nintendo team will be rewarded handsomely for their marketing insights, great planning and execution as long as they keep up their footwork for the next few months.

I look forward to their online channels and new games.

 

This is so very true. The launches were very similar, except that MS actually sold some games with their systems.

 

VG reports that the original PS2 sold 1,299,000 in 2000, but it was over a longer period of time. The PS3 is doing slightly worse than PS2 IMO, especially considering the fact that it's the 2nd week of January and you can even find one. The $600 price tag is going to hurt more than many expected.

Wii is a runaway launch success, but I'm still not sure about its long term future. The games will be absolutely critical. Wii Sports will be a footnote one year from now. They have to follow up with some amazing ideas for the Wiimote. It's Nintendo so I won't count them out, but I found myself not really caring about Wii Sports a few hours after playing it. Cool gimmick that will get impulse buyers to get it, but will it have legs? I don't know. Honestly. Not trolling. I really just don't know. I could be suprised and Nintendo might sell 100 million Wii's. Hard to say.

 

PS2 didn't have alternatives when it launched(Sorry, DC doesn't count because Sony hype machine destroyed DC well before PS2 launched), but PS3 has not only one but two legit alternatives so that is probably why it is not as selling fast. But I think we gotta agree that Sony is doing much better job with PS3 than PS2 in terms of supply though, PS2 had absolutely horrible supply problem in Nov and Dec of 2000.

 

He was referring to Kotaku's article on PS3 ebay sales and this graph:

 

Because Sony made a mistake forcing Blu-Ray down people's throats!

So these unsold PS3s must be proof of Sony's arrogance.

 

still looks like the xb360 is leading in NA in a years time

ive made a little chart of the northamerica NPD sales figures + extrapolated sales for the coming year ( ill update it again when the dec figures come out )
whilst the xb360 trend is prolly reasonably close to its eventual sales, its to early in the wii + ps3 lifecycle (only one months data) to judge what will happen, prolly have to wait until apr/may figures for a clearer picture
http://server5.pictiger.com/img/837502/computer-games-and-screenshots/npdnov-2006.php
(click to view)

btw feel free to add 20% to the figures if it makes u happy

 

Another way to look at this is on the amount of money consumers shelled out to for each platform. Just using vgcharts numbers (For simplicity let's assume 20GB and 60GB SKUs were an even split):
4mil units * $250 = $1Bil USD
1.41 units * ~$550 = $0.77Bil USD

Considering the price of a PS3, the numbers are impressive. The Wii attracted only 22% more dollars than the PS3. I think it's fair to look at it this way since the products are priced very differently and are functionally completely different products as well. This is the same reason why comparing bicycle sales numbers with motorcycle sales volumes directly is not usualy very relevant.

If you compared the PS3 launch with the PS2 launch based on dollars the market was willing to spend, it is very impressive.

 

I'd say it's because the success of the Wii. If the Wii had not been so successful, people would have actually said PS3's 1 million shipped was pretty good given all their troubles. But the success of the Wii in terms of units shipped and also perceived demand paints a bad picture for the 900 pound gorilla. Before the launch of the two consoles, the talk was don't worry about standing in line for Wii. They'll ship enough to meet demand. The PS3, on the other hand, you'll need to give up your first born to get one. Now we see the opposite has happened. It's Boise State vs Oklahoma again.

That pretty much sums it up. Wii has the "it" factor. It's the golden boy, for better or worse. The hardcore just has to accept it.

 

Price is King. This is something that enthusiasts tend to forget often.

For the mass consumer, there were 2 new and 1 semi-new console to choose from. They didn't know about Cell, RSX, Xenos, Xenon and everything else that we all discuss on here. All they wanted was to have fun and play some games. For this, most people have a mental budget preset regardless of disposable income. For some it's higher than others but majority fall into the lower side of the scale.

So along comes beloved Nintendo with a cool new game console that is VERY different than the competition. Then they do something un imaginable by the other two. They show people having FUN! while playing games. Remember what that was like playing games!? when you just sat down, played and had fun? That is exactly the emotion that the Wii brings out in people and thus they're drawn to it. People care much more about having fun than HD DVD/Blu Ray, HDMI, HDTV etc.. etc.... etc..

Sony and MS can both learn from Nintendo on how to hit the market. The DS Lite wins because of similar reasons. They present it as FUN! not some serious competitive high end gaming box.

 

Guys, can we drop that site already, together with nexgenwars? Microsoft's and Sony's CES announcements should make it clear to everyone just what a fraud both sites are...
(at least for current gen sales)

 

There is a market for both types of products. Nintendo is doing their own thing while MS and Sony are doing theirs.

It's wrong to conclude that MS and Sony are donig something wrong because Nintendo is doing something right.

 

Your angle has some major holes though:

1. Games sell at a roughly fixed price. The console is the "lamp" and the games are the fuel. Regardless of the cost of the console, there is a $40-$60 cost for games. i.e. Publisher profits. Hence what matters to publishers is Units * Attach Rate, as Units * Attach Rate = Profits.

Publishers absolutely don't care if customers are investing "more" into your platform; actually they do care because higher costs mean a. less money potentually invested in software and b. the larger technical curve means higher development costs.

2. Consumers are likewise stratisfied. The old sayings like, "5% of people make 95% of all money" and so forth.

Use cars as an anology. A nice Lexus is a better product than a Kia. But only 5% can buy the Enzo; 95% the Kia. So a 20:1 user ratio; yet that 1 Enzo costs about as much as 20 Kias! So technically consumers are investing the same amount of money. For arguements sake, lets assume Kia and Lexus both brake even with their cars.

Now as a FUEL salesman, which is more relevant?

I would rather sell fuel to 20 Kias than to 1 Enzo because there is much more potential sales to all those Kias.

The fact is the number of consumers willing to pay $500+ for a console is a limited market. We know this for a FACT as history has shown this. How big is the market? There is no firm number. I thought before launch it was at least 6M strong, but no one knows for certain.

But at the end of the day if Sony (or MS) consoles themselves with, "Yes, Wii outsold us, but our consumers invested more total money for consoles" then they are totally misguided -- and publishers are certain to let them know this in no uncertain terms.

The numbers you present can be turned many ways, although I think the above 2 points invalidate how you use them. For that matter, one could (wrongly, IMO) use your numbers to demonstrate an annual "cap" consumers are willing to invest. But in the end the value of "consumer dollars invested" must be viewed in consumer spending power and how it is stratisfied (i.e. more people at the bottom than at the top) and that potentially more money spent on hardware is less spent on software (all things even).

And somehow the concept of "supply limited" and the reality supply limited launches obscurve a little thing called "demand" still evades this thread

Put more plainly, if Product-A has a 20M unit demand and Product-B has a 5M unit demand, if each only ship 1M units the actual demand is obscured by the limitations of supply. And if you really want to start digging at it from your angle you not only need to consider inflation, but also things like scope of launch (e.g. the PS2 shipped earlier in Japan, but also racked up over 5M sales in its first 9 months)

 

On the other hand, someone who just bought an Enzo would not be worried about spending money on fuel. While a Kia driver is likely on a tight budget.

And based on www.fueleconomy.gov:
Ferrari Enzo: City 8, Highway 12, Annual Fuel Cost: $4250
Kia Rio: City 29, Highway 38, Annual Fuel Cost $1094

And those numbers are based on the premise that you are going to be putting the same piss into your Ferrari as your Kia. Which of course no sane person would do - you're going to buy the expensive premium stuff for the Ferrari.

So all things considered, you could still make a good bit of money just selling fuel to that one Enzo owner. It's not going to be the same margins, but a business model based on fule for th high end stuff is certainly viable. There is room for both products.

 

There's also something else to consider. I predict that come quarterly earnings time, you will see a tale of two CC's. First will be Nintendo who will be resoundly congratulated by analysts for record profits. The second will be Sony, who will bring out all sorts of funny metrics as above to embelish their numbers because there will be massive shellshock over their bottom line. Why? If they really are losing $xxx over every console sold and the attach rate is really as bad as reported (including peripherals), then they will be taking massive losses in their next-gen console business. The only thing to alleviate this would be PS2 and PSP sales. It may not be enough to hide the big losses but we'll see.

Many people say Sony and Nintendo compete in different markets, and I don't fully buy into that for many reasons. If, for the sake of argument, we say that's true, does it matter? If Nintendo is raking in money and the competition can't profit from their sales, I'll take Nintendo's market any day. To put things in perspective though, we're just at the beginning of the beginning. But it sure is interesting all of a sudden.