Wii Outsells PS3, Blue-ray Outsells HD DVD 182
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.
Wow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow? (Score:5, Funny)
That's because analysts have demonstrated an ability to be wrong so often that it cannot be explained by probability alone, and must therefore be due to some sort of supernatural power that they posses.
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Currently, things are pretty slow for both systems, as we're currently in the post-launch lull. So now, both sides of the isle are worried that their system
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Additionally, most everything sells less following the holidays, as most people don't have money to buy things. Many of the purchases of the Wii are likely to be people still attempting to get little Johnny his Christmas present.
However, the true lull is
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Can you trade/rent games for PS3? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can you trade/rent games for PS3? (Score:5, Informative)
GameFly thinks it's legal. I'm guessing their legal department made sure of it, first.
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Are the return policies any better in Japan? For the players who are unlucky enough to buy titles that have a show-stopper problem that reveals itself in 5 hours, does it really cost the equivalent of $10 per hour to play games? Why do the nationals of Japan find this fair?
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That's not even remotely true. Some old Zonk (read: FUD) post referred to a patent application by Sony which could be construed to mean that they were thinking about implementing copy protection measures which would prevent re-sale and renting, but no such claim was ever made in actuality.
PS3 games can be played on any PS3, any number of times. They're even further in the "right direction" than I'd have guessed; you can download purcha
It makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:It makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I should have elaborated instead of sounding like a troll. When the PSP debuted, games were scant, but people wanted to use their new hardware so they bought what was in supply: UMD movies. Perhaps now the same thing is happening with the PS3 and Blu-Ray movies.
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Pretty much history repeating itself... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pretty much history repeating itself... (Score:5, Informative)
Where on earth did you come up with THAT? The PS2 was a good-selling console, but it didn't sell THAT well. According to the SanJose Mercury News, lifetime sales for the PS2 in the U.S., as of the end of 2006, was 37.1 million. According to Nielsen, DVD currently has 80% market penetration, and there are approx. 113M U.S. households. (according to the Census), meaning that 90.4M U.S. households have a DVD player. An unknown number of those may have purchased a PS2 AFTER they bought a DVD player. (That was the case in my house.)
Maybe for the households that bought a PS2, it is possible (but not certain) that "most" of them had it as their first player, but that does not translate to the U.S. market overall.
SirWired
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There were certainly many people for which this was true, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it was true for most people. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that many of the people who bought the first PS2s used it also as their first DVD player, particularly in Japan where it came out earlier (and had fewer games). By the time you could easily get a PS2 (ie. after the 2000 Christmas season in the states) DVD players were already pretty commo
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I bought a PS2 on release day. I got my DVD player for less than $100 months before the PS2 was even available. The DVD capability drove PS2 sales, not the other way around. When we look back on this year in the future, we'll see that the same ends up being true for the PS3 and BluRay (assuming BluRay doesn't flop).
BluRay, HD-DVD players, and combo players will be under $200 for Christmas 2007.
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About a year later, my local grocery store had a pallet of DVD players with 5 free movies. The DVD player was $200 which was the cheapest then. That was my first stand alone player and I still have it.
1,000,000 + PS3 systems (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The first 400,000 PS3 units came with a coupon for a free movie (ricky bobby.) The FA even alludes to this fact:
"This high percentage is likely helped by the bundled Talladega Nights Blu-ray disc with the first 500,000 units of PlayStation 3. But even apart from that, 80 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase further Blu-ra
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Or... You could use Slashdot's quote tag. It cleverly tells you about it below the submit button on every reply page.
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And that reason is that the HTML spec developers thought that document authors would want to give more than half a second's consideration to the semantic structure of a document as it was being authored. Sadly, the WYSIWYG paradigm had already taken root, and authors found it easier to use the same vanilla quote marks they'd been typing in word processors for fifteen years than to learn about and use inline "q" tags.
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The HD DVD for the Xbox had a similiar pack in for a movie.
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A q tag is an element, like a paragraph, that is intended for quotations. It separates presentation from content. Users can cause their browser to render it in other ways.
Blockquote works only on block elements like p. It's intended for quoting blocks. But what slashdot has done with it is force it to remove all text formatting, so if I have an italic block inside of a blockquote, it appears without italics. So when I quote your
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Loss Leader (Score:2)
PS3 sales still artifically low (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:PS3 sales still artifically low (Score:4, Informative)
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When I bought my Wii from Future Shop (using Wii Finder Canada & Check4Change, as described here [slashdot.org], they sold out of 100 units in just under 2 minutes.
I think that's a pretty meaningful comparison of demand, right there.
Yes it is (Score:2)
What I am saying is that sales figures for the PS3 (and the Wii) are constrained artificially by lack of consistent supply. I myself walked into Target the other day and saw two PS3's. They were not there the day after... the simple fact is that you can't draw any real conclusions from either sales figures compared to devices that are more consistently in stock and available for purchase at any time in any locati
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To me, anecdotal stories like that are rather pointless. All it means is that you were able to find it that one time. One event doesn't mean anything. After all, you could just have been lucky. I can tell you that I haven't been (and I also live in
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I am currently, and personally, staking out 20 different retail chains which sell both systems. I can assure you that at all 20 locations in various states across the country there were 173 million PS3s, 2 Yillion Wiis, and absolutely no Bobs frog blasting ventcores.
By this I conclude that Durandal is winning the war. Sony and Nintendo will be buried with the epitaph "Fatum Iustum Stultorum".
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I think you missed my point. I agree it's unusual. And you don't have to convince me that Wii consoles are selling a lot better than PS
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It might be in short supply on amazon, but there's still other online stores who carry it at retail price:
http://ps3finder.com/ [ps3finder.com]
At the moment, you can by the retail box at Gamestop.com and circuitcity.com, and bundles at several other stores.
Even there harder to get (Score:2)
At Gamestop it takes up to 72 hours to process an order, instead of the 24 other products take.
www.circuitcity.com says it is "out of stock online"
As noted, Amazon will not even sell you one directly yet, only sporadically when they get shipments and at those time PS3 sales spike.
The PS3 obviously has some lingering supply issues, despite wider availability than it used to have. It's not as sim
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And this is different than the Wii's short supply
--Jeremy
It's the same (Score:2)
Basically it's saying that right now, you cannot really gauge either PS3 or Wii sales against the 360 which does have a stable supply.
There are also people paying more (Score:2)
Bluray? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus PS3 has that blinking issue...maybe good for "3D" movies (ref to old vid cards that came with "special" LCD glasses).
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No blinking on 360 with HDMI? (Score:2)
The blinking issue that only people with 1080p televisions using HDMI have? Right, well apparently the problem is really HDCP handshaking [xbox-scene.com] and not the PS3 or the TV necessarily, and how does your 360 look with HDMI? Oh right, it doesn't have that yet. I bet you can buy a $200 add-on for it though, or just a whole new console [engadget.com] in 6 months. But believe the hype, the $400 360 has so much
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Apples and Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dude, by now everybody knows that the PS2 had the worst hardware of last gen. Even Gamecube was better and Wii is twice as powerful as that.
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And while not mind-blowing, things like Rayman, Super Monkey Ball, and Excite Truck all look surprisingly good for first-gen titles -- especially considering their sort of mini game oriented design. They look spectacularly good if you compare them to the first-gen titles of the PS2/'Cube/Xbox era.
--Jeremy
Opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
"the word, from Sony itself" (Score:2, Interesting)
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You're right. And that's the thing: My gaming console of choice (Wii) shipped with a GAME in the box. Imagine that! A gaming system shipping with a game in the box...
Sony removed all confusion about the purpose of the Playstation 3 when they chose to pack a movie in the box.
It really is true... (Score:2, Interesting)
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The fact of the matter is that you're still more likely *not* to see a PS3 on the shelf than you are to see one available. You can find as many pictures of people playing in a pile of empty boxes as you'd like and it won't change it. When you can buy one online at any hour of the day without buying a bundle, then they'll be readily available.
Also, the stores in your area suck ass if they make people wait out in the cold i
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Also, you're too quick to dismiss the people-waiting-for-Wiis phenomenon. I talked to a Nintendo rep today at Gamestop. He claimed that places like Target and Wal-Mart are routinely receiving Wiis during the week and are holding them for weekend sales to coincide with their Sunday advertising circulars. He suggested that if you want a Wii, go wait outside one of these stores on a Sunday morning. The Target manager said the same thing. You can complain
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Here is the BestBuy, if you live in the MD/DC area.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat1209 1&type=page&allstores=no&mode=fromResult&storeId=2 65 [bestbuy.com]
It is worth noting... (Score:3, Informative)
What is left to be seen is if Blu-Ray can hold onto the market of gamers just "giving HD movies a try."
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Novelty: will wear off (Score:2)
It makes sense for their investment (they can't choose, as with XBOX360), they'll buy at least one BR movie to try out "what it's about".
But once the novelty wears off, one thing remains absolute: BR movies have worse DRM and way worse prices than plain DVDs, and only a little benefit in value (namely, higher resolution).
I'm not trying to spin this as if Sony's success with Blu-Ray is fake, as there isn't any real reason for
Observed DRM the same (Score:2)
Look at this from the standpoint of 90% of the market.
WHat do they do with a DVD? They take the disc, and put it in a player.
What do they do with HD-DVD/Blu-Ray? They take the disc, they put it in a player.
You forget that normal CD's have pretty onerous DRM as well. But it's accepted because most people never see the limit
CSS (Score:2)
No, I call the CSS and region locking features onerous (at least for what I would like to do). But for most users those aspects did not and do not matter.
Again, it doesn't matter how many technical comparisons or issues you bring up - if you want to understand end-user acceptance of a format, you must go through end-user use cases and see if they are affected by DRM. The closest you get is that users potentially face hookup issues with HDCP connections (HDMI being the th
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I think you meant to say DVDs in your previous post where you said CDs? Then everything would make sense. Relatively few CDs have DRM, and of those that do a lot of them are well-known for causing problems with the basic stick in disc/play disc behavior that is all most people really want to work.
Anyway you have a point, though I also notice that the DRM
Dead cat bounce (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a dead cat will bounce once on its way down.
The common perception about the VideoScan numbers is that a lot of PS3 owners used their "free Blu-ray movie" coupon, boosting 'sales' after Christmas. Especially since there doesn't seem to be anything else available worth doing on the PS3 device right now. This is in addition to a rather dry HD-DVD lineup in January. Let's remember, the first two weeks in January after Christmas doesn't necessarily set a trend.
The VideoScan numbers for the third week in January, not reported in the article, already show Blu-Ray slumping down again, compared to HD-DVD.
All this sounds vaguely similar to the narrowly-defined "Zune leads 30GB music player market in first two days of sales" reports we saw a few weeks ago. Much ado about nothing.
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Trend, not a bounce (Score:3, Informative)
These are numbers that show Blu-Ray consistently on top, for almost a month now - and continuing to grow. Don't forget the coupon still required you to spend money, it was not a "free" movie - and anyone even using that coupon is likley to buy more titles as well since they have it rigged up to play movies.
The only people who really know how well either format are
but lets hope that bluray wins (Score:2)
I am not interested in HD video, but I do hope that DVD-R/+R is replaced soon by a format with more capacity. From that point of view, HD-DVD just doesn't offer enough improvement.
The format that "wins" the video market will get cheaper media in the long run, and for all computer users it is thus to be hoped that the format with the most capacity wins.
No duh? (Score:2)
I hope so, especially seeing that the US PS3 came with a free copy of Talladega Nights.
* 80% of PS3 owners plan on buying/watching Blueray dvd's in the future.
No duh? I hate to sound sarcastic here, but what's the sense in buying a $600 piece of hardware if you don't plan on using all the features. Everybody watches DVDs these days. I imagine if I had a BlueRay DVD player sitting there, I'd plan on buying/watching at bare minimum my FAVORITE
Most PS3 owners watch Blueray movies. (Score:2)
That still seems low. If the player's already there, why wouldn't you want to pick up a at least few Blu-Ray disks? Even as a novelty.
the US PS3 came with a free copy of Talladega Nights.
Ah, that explains it.
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And, for the record, not every US PS3 came with Talladega Nights. Mine didn't. Unless I just got ripped off.
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Then why would these people be early adopters of the PS3? I do agree with your statement however, and I'll go you one further.
"If you don't have an HDTV there really is no benefit (Graphically) to buying a PS3 (or a 360) over an Original X-Box."
Try it sometime. Take a game like Call of Duty 3 (which is on pretty much everything) and run it on a PS3 in 480i with the low-def composite cables it came with. Now run the Call of Du
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It just isn't. If you have the capability of using a PS3 or a 360 on a 480i system, try it.
The difference in polys, textures, lighting, etc.. should all still be apparent to a degree even at lower resolutions.
They get blurred and obscured. Progressive scan can clean up a lot of that, but we're talking 480i SD-TV and and the truth of the matter is the extra detail is lost.
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Or RE-Make (Resident Evil 1) or RE4 for Gamecube (With component cables of course). I agree with the 'next gen' statement. With the Exception of Gears of War, none of these 'Next Gen games' couldn't be accomplished (maybe not exact, but for the most part) on current gen (including Resistance). Personally I think it's tem
Hype Train (Score:2, Insightful)
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The question for the Wii is, "Is it hype or is it substance?"
It's the same question that was posed to the DS, and the answer was the latter. That is, however, no guarantee the same is true for the Wii.
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-stormin
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Just one? Rayman Raving Rabbits, WiiSports (it even comes with it), WarioWare, ExciteTruck (it's fun and better with an all Offspring custom soundtrack.) Madden is hella fun as well. The motion controls really add to it. Also if it tickles your fancy there are around 50 VC games available (including Zelda: a Link to the Past, Contra III, Gunstar Heroes, Mario Kart 64...).
I just don't see why the Wii is any better than the gamecub
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The one downside is that frame rates drop pretty bad in the later levels when you start throwing cars around. That - and if kiddie graphics and story turn you off you might have a hard time enjoying it.
Re: Elebits... (Score:2)
Same. Also, was I the only one to get a 'Ghostbuster's vibe' from using the gravity gun?
Zelda (Score:2)
Re:Dear Wii Fanbois (Score:5, Funny)
The "PS3" game on the other hand is the opposite. For those who could afford triple the game price, the first few levels were EXTREMELY hard. Then it got incredibly easy, but by those levels people realized the gameplay was crap and stopped playing altogether.
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Wii Sports.
Don't let the simplistic Fisher-Price-looking avatars turn you off, there's a truly addictive fun-ness to it.
Any more brain busters?
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And they played golf! MY EYES! OH GOD MY EYES!
Remember kids, it's all subjective (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't really a reply to you, as it is to all the Wii fanboys that are about to flame you for being dumb, and citing their favorite Wii games as proof that the Wii is superior to all.
To be honest, I'm in the same boat you are. Looking at the line-up and my particular preference for games, I re
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In order to be on the defensive for "slower sales" it would have to be in last place in that category. Currently, it isn't. The adoption slope for the launch of the PS3 looks more like the PS2 than it does the 360. (In other words, the number of sales per unit time for the launch windows is greater for the PS3 than it was for the 360.) Since there are no good games out for the system (no good reason to a