SCEA announces holiday sales figures (PSP: 1.4m, PS2: 1.3m, PS3: 1.2m)

The UK is the largest market in Europe. But the question should be, how is the PS3 selling in comparison to the 360 there? If the gap isn't really huge then the numbers in the UK is insignificant in comparison to whole Europe where Sony has France, Germany, Italy and especially Spain. Spain is entirely Sony land and from my understanding people there also prefer it over a Wii. All the smaller countries seems to side with the PS3 > 360 as well.

There was an article I read recently that Uncharted has actually held the number 1 spot in the UK game sales for some time in December. This leads me to believe that Uk gamers likes the PS3 more then people in the US.


We don't know what the sales numbers are to be honest the last set that people refer to are the numbers Laa Yosh gave in earlier in the Thread. At the end of August/ September Xbox 360 was around 1 million units ahead. I'd be suprised is thats changed much.
 
Over the past month or so I've noticed a shift where I live. It's a small village with about fourty gamers in total.

Originally I was the only one with a PS3, now I'm the only one with a 360. The majority now have HDTVs and are all movie buffs so Blu-ray has been popular. I know of one person who bought a PS3 just as a DVD\HD player. There is also one Wii owner here, bought for his kids. He has a PS3 in his den.

There are also a significant number of 360's appearing in second hand sales, and games like GoW and Halo3 make up a large portion of the second hand games bins in the local stores.

The PS3 sections of Game and HMV have also become alot more prominent along with the increased shelf space given over to Blu-ray movies (roughy 2:1).
 
We don't know what the sales numbers are to be honest the last set that people refer to are the numbers Laa Yosh gave in earlier in the Thread. At the end of August/ September Xbox 360 was around 1 million units ahead. I'd be suprised is thats changed much.

Considering that Europe follows the holidays just as people do in the US, I wouldn't be surprise if the PS3 took a good slice away from the 360 head start.
 
Over the past month or so I've noticed a shift where I live. It's a small village with about fourty gamers in total.

Originally I was the only one with a PS3, now I'm the only one with a 360. The majority now have HDTVs and are all movie buffs so Blu-ray has been popular. I know of one person who bought a PS3 just as a DVD\HD player. There is also one Wii owner here, bought for his kids. He has a PS3 in his den.

There are also a significant number of 360's appearing in second hand sales, and games like GoW and Halo3 make up a large portion of the second hand games bins in the local stores.

The PS3 sections of Game and HMV have also become alot more prominent along with the increased shelf space given over to Blu-ray movies (roughy 2:1).

Yeah HMV has generally been 60:40 in terms of shelf space in favour of Blu-ray. I'll be looking in the branch near where I work in Central London, to see if this ratio increases in Blu-ray's favour in the coming months, which I expect it will.
 
Why do you say that, do you think that the 360 didn't sell well this Holiday season? I wouldn't be suprised is it actually went further ahead. I don't know what the sales were from Xmas but at best I could only see the PS3 clawing a 100,000 back and thats at best. But as I said I have no numbers so its just guess work and I could be way off the mark.

Considering that Europe follows the holidays just as people do in the US, I wouldn't be surprise if the PS3 took a good slice away from the 360 head start.
 
Crossbar the price drop and the fact Sony hastily had to put put together 40GB sku were required because it was not selling at all. If had sold we would have seen neither.
The new price and 40GB SKU is more than likely what the coming years P&L have been based on and I assume this would also take into account cheaper component coming online in that period. As that article states, they hope to make a profit, I'd be shocked if they have much room fo manouvre on price now.

If they keep the $400 price through all of 2008, that would be a sensation from my POW, that would not follow the normal price curve of consoles. If they were alone on the market they may have been able to pull such a stunt but they are not and have never been.

I don´t subsribe to your assumption that they have already taken all coming cost-reduction into account for the $400 price point. The price cannot stray a away to much from the actual underlying BOM, that is just a too high risk. What if you are not able to keep up selling in volumes when you made those cost-reduction you had already taken into account after the first 5 million units have been sold, then you are in deep trouble.

There are also different ways of making the PS3 business profitable to make up for the subsidized SKUs.
High-end SKUs without subsidies, peripherals with high margins and software of course.
 
Crossbar I agree they probably haven't passed on all the saving to the end user with regards cheaper components. But what i was trying to point out is that they have stated they hope to make a profit on the PS3 this year, this is not set in stone but its hoped. This suggests that they are very tight on the P&L sheets and if they do move the price point again it sounds like it coming off bottom line. It's just a guess on my part and I maybe wrong, I'm normally off track!
 
Yeah, Sony will be walking a tight rope trying to make money and pushing units at the same time, they really depend on the 2008 software line-up no doubts about that.
 
Sony won't catch MS in the US before 2010, if ever. MS has a great lineup this year. Gears of War 2 is arguably a bigger IP to bring to market than MGS4. Sony's best ace is GT5.
 
Shrink further? That suggests that there has been a trend of the gap closing in the US. The closest they got was in July (price drop) where the ps3 was behind by 11000 units. However that gap widened to 146k the following month and has been larger than 146k every month since. I don't know the actual december numbers but I'll eat my hat if the 360 didn't best the ps3 by more than 200k (in reality its probably more like 500k+).

Aside from a tapering off after the Halo3 surge I'd suggest the overall gap has been getting bigger not smaller in the US.

Smaller sales the month right after a price drop is expected obviously.

Butl, I said that because someone in another site compared npd numbers for the latest two or three months(before december obviously).

The % comparison for ps3 and xbox360 was, 30ish, 40ish and 65 percent of sales for the last month. It seemed like if that trend continued the gap would close and reverse in the following months. Though I don't know if the guys data or analysis was accurate.
 
Heh, that last one was 60.5%, my mistake. Double posting, since it seems I can't edit my posts in this board.
 
The % comparison for ps3 and xbox360 was, 30ish, 40ish and 65 percent of sales for the last month. It seemed like if that trend continued the gap would close and reverse in the following months.

To quote Disco Stu, Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% in 1976? If these trends continue...Aayyyyy ...

Even on fairytale site VGChartz, the greatest worldwide difference (last week) was about 50k in PS3's favor... it will need 150 weeks at that rate to eat the 360's 7.5 million lead. This is insignificant - what's significant is what will happen with regards to games and price in 2008.
 
Smaller sales the month right after a price drop is expected obviously.

Butl, I said that because someone in another site compared npd numbers for the latest two or three months(before december obviously).

The % comparison for ps3 and xbox360 was, 30ish, 40ish and 65 percent of sales for the last month. It seemed like if that trend continued the gap would close and reverse in the following months. Though I don't know if the guys data or analysis was accurate.

Closing in terms of % sales, doesn't mean you actually getting closer at all, you can actually be falling further behind in terms of absolute numbers while still selling a higher % of unit sales. For example (not real numbers) 50,000 vs 100,000 moves to 150,000 vs 250000, the gap there is closer in terms of % but falling behind in terms of absolute numbers.

This the gap in absolute units sold in the US for the year after the release of the PS3 (NPD values used). All in favor of the 360.

314000
639000
50000
101000
69000
92000
73000
99000
11000
146000
409000
245000
304000

I certainly don't see any trend where the PS3 is making up ground. The obvious spikes 11k (in July, ps3 price drop) and 409k (in September, release of Halo3) are pretty easily explained.
 
Considering that Europe follows the holidays just as people do in the US, I wouldn't be surprise if the PS3 took a good slice away from the 360 head start.
When I went christmas shopping the PS3 (even the sucky NFS Carbon "pack" that mediamarkt sells) was sold out in most shops just like the Wii and the DS.

There were plenty of 360 available. I even picked up Halo 3 limited edition (the big square box with the helmet and other goodies) for half price - 40€.
 
Closing in terms of % sales, doesn't mean you actually getting closer at all, you can actually be falling further behind in terms of absolute numbers while still selling a higher % of unit sales. For example (not real numbers) 50,000 vs 100,000 moves to 150,000 vs 250000, the gap there is closer in terms of % but falling behind in terms of absolute numbers.

Absolute numbers do mean quantity wise, there's a gap, given approaching holidays rising numbers are expected also. But a trend of shrinking % of total monthly sales between the two, if accurate, would eventually close the gap.
 
Absolute numbers do mean quantity wise, there's a gap, given approaching holidays rising numbers are expected also. But a trend of shrinking % of total monthly sales between the two, if accurate, would eventually close the gap.

Yes rising numbers that are generally expected to show the PS3 falling behind by 500,000-700,000 more units. Perhaps closing the gap in terms of % but falling further behind in absolute install base. If the ps3 sold 9m next month and the 360 10million they'd be much closer in terms of % but further behind in units sold. The more the LTD margin grows the less likely it becomes that the PS3 will ever catch up. It's pretty easy to gain in terms of % when you've started with a small number. Absolute numbers show a much better picture than % numbers.

Like the age of a child, as times goes on and the numbers go up he's always getting closer to his parents in terms of %, but he's not going to catch up until the parents are dead.
 
Yes rising numbers that are generally expected to show the PS3 falling behind by 500,000-700,000 more units. Perhaps closing the gap in terms of % but falling further behind in absolute install base. If the ps3 sold 9m next month and the 360 10million they'd be much closer in terms of % but further behind in units sold. The more the LTD margin grows the less likely it becomes that the PS3 will ever catch up. It's pretty easy to gain in terms of % when you've started with a small number. Absolute numbers show a much better picture than % numbers.

Like the age of a child, as times goes on and the numbers go up he's always getting closer to his parents in terms of %, but he's not going to catch up until the parents are dead.

It is true that it'd still be falling behind in installed base, but the point is, the first step in addressing that, is to continually increase their % of monthly sales.
 
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