PS3 sales

[22psi]

According to this link:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&Date=20070107&ID=6320540

Sony shipped 1M units to NA in 2006.

 

[thatdude90210]

Latest Japan numbers for week ending Dec 31st from VGcharts:

Hardware:
DS 294,750 (-42%) 14,239,250
Wii 181,250 (-37%) 1,040,250
PSP 79,500 (-44%) 4,760,750
PS3 51,250 (-33%) 446,750

Software:
1 Dragon Quest Monsters Joker DS Enix 641,250 641,250
2 Pokemon Diamond / Pearl DS Nintendo 139,500 4,496,750
3 Wii Sports Wii Nintendo 104,750 589,000
4 Wii Play Wii Nintendo 84,500 534,750
5 New Super Mario Bros DS Nintendo 83,250 4,013,750
6 Common Knowledge Training DS Nintendo 74,000 1,033,000
7 Brain Training 2 DS Nintendo 69,500 3,986,500
8 Seiken Densetsu 4 PS2 Square 62,000 218,000
9 Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops PSP Konami 56,250 209,500
10 Animal Crossing: Wild World DS Nintendo 53,500 4,044,500
11 Kirby Squeak Squad DS Nintendo 52,750 789,750
12 Jump Ultimate Stars DS Nintendo 51,750 561,250
13 Yakuza 2 PS2 Sega 50,500 444,500
14 Love and Berry DS Collection DS Sega 48,500 801,000
15 Rockman Star Force DS Capcom 46,750 249,250
16 Wario Ware Smooth Moves Wii Nintendo 41,250 205,250
17 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Wii Nintendo 34,750 292,000
18 Mario Kart DS DS Nintendo 33,000 2,024,000
19 Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology PSP Namco 32,250 146,250
20 Brain Training DS Nintendo 30,750 3,273,250

For those who are scoring at home, that's 12 DS games, 4 Wii games, 2 PSP games, and 2 PS2 games in the top 20.

They didn't include the 360. And the PS3 does not appear to be supply limited. senakablog.com
infoseek.co.jp

 

[OtakingGX]

Even if Playstation 3 fails outright, I doubt they'd abandon the brand without giving at least one more shot at being profitable. Heck, maybe they'll even buy Nintendo.

Sony is big, but not that big. They only have about 4 times the current assets of Nintendo (assets that can be converted into cash within a year). I doubt Sony would deem Nintendo valuable enough to raid 25% of their liquid assets just to acquire them.

 

[RobertR1]

Oh my! Nintendo owns Japan!

 

[London Geezer]

Latest Japan numbers for week ending Dec 31st from VGcharts:

Hardware:
DS 294,750 (-42%) 14,239,250
Wii 181,250 (-37%) 1,040,250
PSP 79,500 (-44%) 4,760,750
PS3 51,250 (-33%) 446,750


They didn't include the 360. And the PS3 does not appear to be supply limited. senakablog.com
infoseek.co.jp

A big WOW for Nintendo. Amazing, once again.

And it seems Sony is getting around 50k PS3's out of the door every week, which isn't too shabby - from a manufacturing point of view. If Sony could produce more, and if the price was a bit lower, they would be much closer to Ninendo's figures. We'll see what happens...

It's funny how i have no interest in buying any of the consoles yet this time around. So much better on my finances!!

 

[liolio]

I'm not sure this has something to do with manufacturing the last week (52) Sony sold 50.000 units.
VGCHART says it's 33% underthe week 51 number so week 51 number were 70.000.
Do you think that if sony has felt like ship ~20.000 in usa instead of japan it can change something in US?

 

[TheChefO]

I'd say Sony is the perfect company for the Playstation brand. It may not be profitable at this moment, but it was Sony's big cashcow for the last decade. Even if Playstation 3 fails outright, I doubt they'd abandon the brand without giving at least one more shot at being profitable. Heck, maybe they'll even buy Nintendo. The next Playstation system is much more likely to be conservatively built, I could see them dramatically ceding the power race to MS. The Playstation is a bit far out of Sony's usual high priced line of products (maybe why the push to sell the PS3 at a higher price and use higher priced components all around?), but I think it fits their overall corporate image well.

in short:
1 - sony perfect for playstation - 10+ years profit - fits corporate image
2 - maybe buy N?
3 - ps4 to be significantly less powerful/less expensive

1) - I agree the playstation brand has great value and would be a valuable asset to many other companies as well. And while the platform has historically been profitable it is becoming a much tougher business as development costs rise in this generation and in the future. While the playstation brand has fit sony it would also fit any electronics company looking to market themselves as cutting edge.

2) OtakingGX covered it.

3) If playstation is still under the sony umbrella I don't thinkthey will scale back performance for cost reasons as the guts of ps3 are not what is driving the cost significantly higher than xbox360. One would be safe to assume the manufactring process at the time of ps4 production will dictate relative power. I expect ps4 to be on par with xbox720 in this regard. The bigger deciding factor will be how easy it will be for developers to tap this potential power from ps4/xbox720.

Besides that, I could see Apple doing a console, but both Nintendo and Microsoft have already copied their image for their own consoles. Additionally, Apple likes to skew towards high priced products even more than Sony. What does $250 get you from Apple right now? A portable music player with less processing power than the average cell phone, a small low res screen, and a 30GB harddrive. 30GB 1.8" harddrives retail for around $70 and would easily be the most expensive component of the system, I could see MRSP being over twice the cost of production. I don't think Apple would be willing to cut prices enough to compete, nor would they be too happy about depending entirely on 3rd parties for software.

Samsung would be good for a cheap console (though they do make some nice and expensive products as well), but I don't think they've got the image necessary to compete outside of Korea. Samsung isn't really known for stylish products anyway.

If the playstation brand does get sold to an outside company I expect they would respect the success of the platform and keep it within the historicly successful bounds for future iterations.


Sidenote - While I agree it does seem farfetched given the historic success of the platform for Sony and their recent heavy investments into cell/bluray, I wouldn't bank on this outcome not being considered.

 

[thatdude90210]

They are producing more, they just aren't selling more. Availability doesn't look to be the problem. There are PS3's on the shelves (some pictures, more pictures) in Japan.

 

[wco81]

All the numbers are down, each console suffering a 30-40% decline.

The vaunted Wii dropped 37% from the previous week.

Maybe the Japanese were all tapped out, although I didn't think they spent a lot on Christmas.

 

[slider]

It's funny how i have no interest in buying any of the consoles yet this time around. So much better on my finances!!

Despite being a keen gamer I feel the same about the PS3. I've sort of tempered my desire for it. Mind you I said the same thing about the 360 and there's one sitting proudly under my telly right now.

LB, get back to us when PS3 has launched in Mongoli... sorry, I mean Europe. When it's sitting on a shelf is when the real test will come.

 

[Mintmaster]

I guess Sony has a good opportunity now to stockpile for the Europe launch, assuming there are enough consumer that can handle the price.

 

[Mintmaster]

If there are just 200 left in the states, i think those are really good numbers for sony.

You can't seriously think that there are only 15 Best Buys in the entire United States, and that they're all located in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky, can you?

 

[avaya]

Sony is big, but not that big. They only have about 4 times the current assets of Nintendo (assets that can be converted into cash within a year). I doubt Sony would deem Nintendo valuable enough to raid 25% of their liquid assets just to acquire them.

They should have acquired Square-Enix. They already have a stake.

 

[Fox5]

Sony is big, but not that big. They only have about 4 times the current assets of Nintendo (assets that can be converted into cash within a year). I doubt Sony would deem Nintendo valuable enough to raid 25% of their liquid assets just to acquire them.

I meant more if the Playstation division completely failed, rather than withdrawing from the game market Sony instead may have mass layoffs and liquidations of the Playstation division, and buy Nintendo instead and just rebrand it Playstation. Nintendo has shown they're very good at optimizing profit, certainly something Sony would be looking for if they look at the Playstation brand as solely a bread winner and not a means to push/develop technology and the Sony brand. Then again, isn't it against Japanese corporate culture to have layoffs in general, I don't know if their pride would allow something like that. In fact, I don't know if any corporation's pride would, it's more like something a financial analyst would suggest happening.

Nintendo must look at least somewhat tempting though, not only do they have historic high levels of profitability, they also seem to be owning the Japanese market right now. If the wii and ds end up dominating Japan and doing ok in America and Europe while the PS3 universally tanks, that $10 to $20 billion it would cost for Nintendo might not look so bad when it means 100% control of the Japanese market, and probably at least half the American market and the majority of the European market. Alternatively, it would be attractive purchase for Microsoft as well, or anyone who was willing to go balls out with their cash in return for a very profitable subdivision and large amounts of market share. But this was true when MS tried to buy them prior to the Xbox as well.

(I wouldn't have minded seeing a Microsoft Gamecube. Sold at $300 at a loss with a 600mhz gecko, 200mhz flipper, 64MB of ram, and a 1GB microdrive. Oh, and built in ethernet port.)

Sidenote - While I agree it does seem farfetched given the historic success of the platform for Sony and their recent heavy investments into cell/bluray, I wouldn't bank on this outcome not being considered.

Perhaps in the future, but I couldn't see Sony abandoning Playstation even if Playstation 3 is a colossal failure, there's still too much at stake not to give it another go. It would damage the Playstation brand name, but not so much that an attractive (most likely cheaper) Playstation 4 couldn't have a fighting chance. IMO, the number 1 failing of the Playstation 3 is the high pricing, irregardless of all the negative press about it and the late launch.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I wasn't comparing, I was pointing out why it did not make business sense to launch PS3 any earlier than it did. Just because it was in Microsofts interest to end the life of the Xbox early, doesn't make it to be in Sony's as well. While the PS3 might not directly influence the PS2's sales, I think the reason for launching the PS3 later is more because of production issues. With CELL, EE/GS as well as PSP's chips being fabbed inhouse, I'm sure the production rate of PS2 parts has fallen significantly since PS3 entered mass production as of mid 2006. If they would have prepared for a 2005 launch, they would have started much earlier with mass production and that surely would have had an effect on PS2 production as well as publishers still supporting the dominant console of last generation.

How can you not see the business sense in launching earlier than 2006? Look at the huge momentum that 360 has right now, that is very real and can not be ignored, much of that momentum would not exist today if Sony had launched PS3 in 2005.

Surely the sales of the PS3 over the next 10 years are more important than the final couple years of PS2, furthermore, Sony launching PS3 earlier would not have had a huge impact on PS2 sales anyways, as they compete for completely different consumers.

I think it's clear at this point that the inclusion of BR, and the launch delays will adversely affect that market domination for PS3, if only for the fact that MS has been able to establish themselves as a much more serious competitor than last generation, gained huge amounts of developer support, and has a install base lead that will take at least 2-3 years to overtake.

If Sony had launched earlier, with DVD, they would almost definately have the console install base lead today, nevermind needing 3 years to catch up, and they wouldn't be losing developer support as a result of that lower install base, or bleeding buckets of money like they will over the next year.

Arguing BR was the right move at this point is a little much imo, the picture is fairly clear. Perhaps it's the right move for Sony as a whole, but certainly not for the PS3 itself.

 

[wco81]

Sony announced this eve. that they shipped 1 million in NA.

That's more than what MS shipped in NA last year.

Also more than what PS1 and PS2 shipped.

Despite double the price of its predecessors.

Despite the weak launch lineup.

Despite the two "hot" competitors which are priced much cheaper.

Despite the production problems with the blue laser diodes.

Hmm, arguing that BR was the wrong move is a bit too much IMO at this point.

 

[patsu]

wco81, where is the source link ? Or is this a CES announcement ?

 

[Onlooker1]

Sony announced this eve. that they shipped 1 million in NA.

I hope the PS3 will make it to at least equal position (outside japan) with X360, it is good for the market to have two leaders neither with a huge edge. HOWEVER, I find it very difficult to believe there are 1m PS3s out there in the sales channels. Why? because GTHD, a FREE downloadable demo, gives ranks for your track times and even a loser can get a rank. I haven't checked for a week, but even so, the first car if you drive like a granny and then wait at the start/finish line, then come in just below the 2 minute cutoff, your rank is, um, something like 2x,xxx .. so that means, unless I'm missing something here, there are probably only 3x,xxx to 4x,xxx PS3s in the hands of consumers (who seriously would buy one and not use wifi or wired to check out the store?). (Btw, 4x,xxx is I think is a pretty good figure, given the late launch, the bundling that went on, and the difficulty getting one).

So I'm wondering why the other 950,000 PS3s (or, say, just 450,000) are not yet online, and have run the GTHD demo...

 

[wco81]

wco81, where is the source link ? Or is this a CES announcement ?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/live-from-the-sony-ces-keynote/

The actual claim is they sold 1 million faster than the PS1 or PS2 so I misinterpreted the benchmark.

That could mean they're counting Japanese sales.

4:54 - "So let's kick things off with the PS3." They're bringing up Peter Dille to give a PS3 update -- you may recall Peter? He's going over the usual PS3 pimping. Their goal: to ship 1m PS3s in 2006. Their accomplishment: reaching that goal. "One of the most important consumer electronics products of the decade." Apparently the PS3 has sold 1m units faster than PS and PS2, so he sounds pretty optimistic amidst the criticism surrounding Sony of late. Their next goal: 6m by March 2007.

 

[Onlooker1]

Sorry I can't edit my previous post, but another indicator .. the forum membership at myresistance.net is about 11,000 people. So maybe 1/3rd the people who buy resistance bother to register there (it is kind of useful as they have online stats linking). Maybe 1/2 the people who bought a PS3 bought the best launch title.
So that still gives us 5x,xxx to 6x,xxx max in the hands of the consumers, and maybe 100k shipped at best?