Wii Outsells PS3, Blue-ray Outsells HD DVD

njkid1, a regular contributor of GameDaily articles, passed us word that the Wii is handily outselling the PS3 in Japan. Famitsu parent company Enterbrain has figures showing that Nintendo sold 405,000 Wii units last month, while Sony sold 148,000 units of the PS3. While this is probably not something the folks at Sony are overjoyed about, they did have reason to crow this week. They've now announced that cumulative Blu-ray sales have passed the HD DVD format for the first time. Gamasutra has the word, from Sony itself, with some interesting supporting information. Most PS3 owners, it seems, have used their system to watch HD movies. Some full 80 percent plan to buy further HD titles in the future. This is further support for the VideoScan sales figures we discussed last week.

Can you trade/rent games for PS3?

[CrazyJim1]

Some old slashdot post said it was illegal. Is there any truth to this?

It makes sense

[Sciros]

Given that there are no games to play on the PS3, it makes complete sense that people would be watching movies on it instead. There really has been nothing to push HD-DVD that much so I'm not surprised that Blu-Ray is winning in terms of sales. However, that may change as soon as less-expensive players are released that have more functionality, etc.

In any case, those sales numbers are probably too small right now to bring them any significant returns. I'd wait a year or two before considering whether Sony made a mistake with Blu-Ray or not.

Pretty much history repeating itself...

[rsmoody]

Just like DVD, most people's first DVD player was a PS2. I was not one of them, I had a standalone DVD player a long time before the PS2 came out and found myself quite disappointed with the DVD playback of the PS2 in terms of quality and usability/controllability. I will not be buying a PS3 anytime soon and do not have a HDTV to see the difference even if I did get one so I would not be buying BlueRay movies. I think that more than anything, this is curiosity since they have the console and have the capability, the games are not so new now, they need to try something new with this $600 piece of hardware to give it some worth. I for one would like to know the sales numbers for standalone next-gen DVD players and/or the stats on people buying BlueRay movies who do not have a PS3. In terms of the format war, BlueRay has still not won but probably will as the combo players hit production given the momentum that this is putting behind it. I personally still feel that BOTH formats are losers and am not interested in either. When and IF I am ever able to afford a HDTV, I will not be able to afford a $500-$1000 DVD player to go along with it. Besides, I will be so excited to have a larger and wide-format screen that the wow will be there for a long time after. Perhaps by the time the upgrade wow has worn off, the combo players will be affordable, but I highly doubt that will happen for about another 3-5 years (the afford ability that is). Just like always, my .02.

1,000,000 + PS3 systems

[HappySqurriel]

Obviously Blu-Ray has started to sell well after 1,000,000+ Blu-Ray enabled PS3 units ... The question I have is if Blu-Ray will continue to sell well over the next few months ...

I really don't know, but I suspect that a lot of people who bought a PS3 to play games might have bought 1 or 2 Blu-Ray movies simply because they wanted to try the drive out; being that there are few places that currently rent Blu-Ray/HD-DVD movies buying them is the only option for a lot of people. In contrast, I suspect that anyone who has bought any HD-DVD player is likely a movie collector and will buy 1-2 movies every week (or two) for the next couple of years. The question is how big of an impact 1 PS3 will make towards sales as compared to one stand alone HD-DVD player.

PS3 sales still artifically low

[SuperKendall]

Yes there are units in stores now.

However, PS3 sales are still somewhat lower than they could be, as evidenced by the lack of shipping units on Amazon. Any time Amazon gets a number of them to sell, sales surge - in-between that, third-party sellers list units for about $100 more.

That said even if there were wide availability of the console the Wii would probably outsell it just because it's a lot cheaper. An interesting place to keep track is here [eproductwars.com] (look at core system sales lower in the page), though as noted the figures are a little unrealistic because they are based on Amazon sales.

Opinion

[4g1vn]

I believe that the Wii, PS3, and 360 all have their respctive places in the video game industry. Wii: Great for a different experience, easy for eveyone to pick up and play, awesome for it's Virtual Console (my favorite part). PS3: Blu-ray player is a bargin, HDMI out, cheap downloadable games. 360: Decent libary, XBOX live is a great social sceen, quality controllers. BTW, I have the PS3 and Wii and love them both.

"the word, from Sony itself"

[Megajim]

Does anyone really think that Sony would claim anything else? The article itself says that "this high percentage is likely helped by the bundled Talladega Nights Blu-ray disc with the first 500,000 units of PlayStation 3." I understand that the study itself is not from Sony, but from Nielsen VideoScan. Still, it's way too early to declare anything close to a winner, considering how many people actually own the proper displays (particularly in the US, but I bet the Super Bowl made a big impact on HDTV sales). Show me stats in another six months, as I'll bet that a lot of the PS3 owners who bought Blu-ray movies at a 2:1 rate over HD-DVD might have done just that - they bought two movies, maybe along with two PS3 games, just to try it out (as HappySqurriel says above). If all 360s came with a HD-DVD drive (and they most likely will sometime this year), maybe those people would have done the same thing, and we would (and probably will) see a different ratio. Meanwhile, stand-alone HD-DVD players are a better deal than stand-alone Blu-ray players, and it won't be long before Toshiba lowers the price on those units yet again, so perhaps the overall PS3 impact on the format war won't be a deathblow to HD-DVD (not that I own either format at this point).

It really is true...

[thousandinone]

My local Best Buy store has PS3s sitting on its shelf, and has had them in stock for some time now. On the other hand, there are people camping outside of the store every day now hoping that they will get Wiis in stock on that day... Some of these mornings we've had wind chill factors of -5 F or lower. I may be giving people in my area the benefit of the doubt in this, but I don't think this has to do with the console being cheaper; this behavior is not a symptom of being 'cheap' as far as I know.