1 Million PlayStation 3s Shipped 234
The word from Gamasutra is that Sony is boasting 1 million PS3s shipped. They hope to have 6 million units out the door by the end of this year. This came from Sony's CES press conference, which only touched briefly on their new system. Hints were, though, that they'll be rolling out an IPTV system for many of their consumer electronics via the Xross GUI already in use on the PSP and PS3. From the article: "According to the company, the majority of new Sony televisions -- starting with several Bravia flat-panel LCD TVs this spring -- will accept an attachable module that can stream broadband high-definition and other Internet video content with the press of a remote control button. The module will be available this summer, and content will come from sources including AOL, Yahoo! and Grouper, now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, as well as Sony Pictures itself and Sony BMG - however, none of this streaming video content has yet been confirmed for the PlayStation 3."
Info.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll ship 10 million photos of me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Info.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:1 million shipped (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Japan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the end of March I'd say. All snark aside, there's some reality to that statement. The reason there is a "console wars", is because the console that makes the best business model for 3rd party developers gets the most exclusive games and the best ports. It's as simple as that.
The business model that Sony presented this generation, is one of the highest development costs, for a variety of reasons, but they hoped to balance that by selling 100 million systems again this generation. Which would work pretty well. Except for the selling lots of systems part it seems. So their whole business model they're presenting breaks down. For this reason, you'll see a sparse line-up this holiday season, which results in less sales. It's a negative feedback loop, and the stronger it is, the more they'll need to do to counter it. (An AAA+++ title or a huge price cut or both)
Just to go a bit further. The 360 has a more comfortable programming/design environment and better tools provided, lowering costs, and has a large and very active American and European fanbase, plus online handled through XBL, the possibility of demos and new content, and microtransactions (even though we all hate them). It's a good model.
Nintendo is offering a very low development cost system, that focuses more on controller interaction than pushing polygons. And it looks like Nintendo will be combining this with a very large world-wide installed base. (The Wii will probably be the #1 system worldwide by middle of the year) It's a very good model.
It all comes down to the games. Before the launch of the PS3, people were saying they wanted it because they wanted the same experience they got with the PS2 and the PS1, namely the huge library that had games in every genre and even created a few new ones. But it's looking more and more like that experience is going to be on a non-Sony system.
So if Sony can't start selling systems, it's not going to get the games. And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that. And I liked..no loved the GameCube. But a lot of people didn't. (Mostly people who didn't have it..but anyway) Or they perceived it to be a failure.
Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent this is correct but it is not (entirely) true.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
Bravia only? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it sounds like this only works on Sony units, and only certain specific Sony units at best -- yet another Sony proprietary product to waste their resources upon. Can't they see that a seperate unit which works with any HDTV would be better for both them and customers? But, this is Sony we're talking about.
Re:The PS3 will do fine when... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MythTV on PS3 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
Most stores received 5-10 units at launch and the launch quantities were estimated to be between 150k and 200k... nearly double the launch quantities are sitting on shelves at any given store which means there might be anywhere between 300K to 400K units shipped but not sold... If Sony has only shipped 1 million units to the US it means it only took about 600K-700K units to saturate the market (at very least substantially less then 1 million)... that is also known as crappy holiday console sales, even worse when you consider the Xbox 360 saturated the market and sold nearly 2.4 million units in the same period of time, and the Wii is still currently sold out with over 2 million units shipped also. Using the same logic if Sony delivered the PS3 in the same launch day quantities that Nintendo delivered their Wii, then the PS3 would not have sold out at launch.
By admitting that they've met demand they're admitting that the demand isn't all that high. Because the quantities that they've reached are still very low when compared to the competition.
Re:1 million shipped (Score:3, Insightful)
The figure for Nintendo Wii stood at 1.8 million units - despite the fact the console only launched in North America on November 19, and the first batch of stock sold out within hours.
link [gamesindustry.biz]
In addition, Wedbush is estimating that Sony sold 600,000 units (800,000 cumulative) of PS3 and that Nintendo sold 1.3 million (1.8 million cumulative) units of Wii in December.
link [gamasutra.com]
So NPD (the most accurate tracking company in North America) is predicting that Nintendo sold 1.8 Million Wii in North America as of December 25th, the analyst firm Wedbush Morgan is saying 1.8 in 2006, and your number says 1.2 (likely 1.2 Million in December).
On top of that in Japan the current numbers are 1,000,250 Wii vs. 456,750 PS3 where the Wii has been out for 5 weeks compared to 8 for the PS3; Nintedo has also launched in Europe and sold 325,000 consoles in 2 Days in Europe [gamesarefun.com]. So we have a number of 3,125,000 Wii sold before we know how many Wii systems were sold in europe over the past 4 weeks; if you assume sales of approximately 200,000 per week (a reasonable estimate) the Wii as sold ~4 Million units to 1.5 Million PS3 systems shipped.
Non-Fanboi (Score:3, Insightful)
What I will offer up is my humble opinion.
They are meeting demand faster than the 360 due to the system not selling out as fast.
The cost is still too high and they won't see big sales numbers until they lower the cost. They can't lower the cost, at present, due to losing money out of the gate. It's also a lost cause because MS/Nin can still low ball them if they decide to drop the cost. I think if they came in around 360 premium price, they would see better market penetration. They should also consider releasing a non-BR version with wifi for $299 and I bet it'd sell the shit out of the present choices they are offering up.
The PS3 was, pretty much, a paper release. I say this because they didn't have enough units, on hand, very few games, an incomplete gaming network, etc. I think they released and hoped to get the early adapters and such, but to this point, I think it's been a disappointing release, for them, no matter what they say. The truth is the cost is the single biggest issue holding them back. Everyone is piling on, now, so unless they pull something huge out of their asses, things aren't going to improve until they drop the price.
$600 is way too much for a video game system for the avg family, period. All the spoiled children who want to say it's not, obviously don't earn a living, so they have no valid appreciation for how much $600 is. I can afford a PS3, no problem, but I am unmarried and I don't have children. My low cost subsistence of free pr0n, boca burgers, and no debt make things more affordable:D I finally bought a 360, after a year of trying to justify it, because I could at least modularize it, which does make it cheaper. That's the simple truth.
Confused, Irratated and Annoyed (Score:3, Insightful)
The Xbox360 isn't in the same market, After a year there are almost enough games to make me interested in getting a Xbox360, but the limited hard drive lack of blu ray/HD DVD, crappy expansion slots and most importantly lack of any singstar,buzz,Guitar Hero type of games which puts me off the console.
The you have the Gimmick or Wii as it prefers to be known which has Wii sports, while I'm sure it will suck in many people with Wii Sports (heck we do have a 30 person strong waiting list for Wii's) I can't help but see it as anouther gamecube which will end up with two games I like and the rest of the game library sucking hugely. I'm not saying Wii Sports isn't fun, but it is the type of game which doesn't stay fun after the tenth time you've picked it up (kinda the same way a singstar/buzz game loses enjoyability over time.)
What does a gamer do? On one hand you have a console which sells based on a Gimmick (Wiimote) which looks set to sell hugely, one console which is limited in games for the non hard core gamer (which has sold well(Xbox360)) and the only console which looks like it could cover both is so incredibly expensive that I couldn't justify buying it (as well as the company showing increasing signs of evilness.)
Re:1 million shipped (Score:4, Insightful)
Only one console had a poor launch this generation, and it wasn't the PS3.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)