The sales numbers for October were released yesterday and once again Sony and their PS3 (and PS2 and PSP for that matter) got pounded by the Wii, Xbox 360 and DS.
Can Sony do anything to turn their fortunes around? 2008 was supposed to be the “Year of the PS3”, but it seems like every anticipated exclusive PS3 title crashes and burns. Metal Gear Solid 4 was only in the top 10 for one month and LittleBigPlanet looks like it will follow suit.
How long will it be before developers pull a GameCube and stops releasing games for the PS3 that would normally be multiplatform? The development environments seems to be different enough that some companies have already started doing this (like Valve).
If anyone wants to discuss the video game business in general, I’d be more than willing to do that as well.
Sure doesn’t look that way, does it? I mean, Little Big Planet was supposed to be their huge exclusive rollout, and then they had to delay it because of the “Koran song” issue, and the whole game went over like a lead balloon. Hard to see a way back for PS3, really. There’s a market for the Wii, and a market for the XBox, and with the PS3, it seems like all it can do is pick up the XBox’s table scraps.
They’ll probably just do better next time around. I suppose it’s a good indication of how easily success can turn into failure.
Out of interest, do you have sales numbers for Japan? I’d assume Sony were taking advantage of the comparative uninterest in the Xbox, but I don’t know how well they’re doing there currently.
Rough data from VGChartz.com shows the PS3 at about 2.5 million, the Xbox 360 at 800,000 and the Wii at 7 million.
The software charts are even more depressing for Sony. The PS3’s top seller is MGS4 at about 600,000. The Wii has 8 titles that have sold more than that.
I’m surprised so many people are buying the PS2 compared to a PS3. I would think that everyone who wanted one had one like five years ago. Has an eight year old system ever sold so well when a newer versions have been available?
I think the death knell for Sony was last Christmas. This year as people accepted that the PS3 was not going to be making serious in roads the software support has been slipping away. Sony doesn’t even have the core brands like Nintendo did with the N64 and Gamecube to fall back on.
Not that the moribund sales on the PS3 are going to stop some people from claiming it’s a triumph. I’ve been told repeatedly that it’s just pining for the fjords.
Of course I wouldn’t count Sony out on a PS4. Two years from now they could probably repackage the PS3 slightly, call it a PS4, and do reasonably well with it. Maybe they’ll have learned their lesson from this fiasco, or maybe they’ll just blame other people and repeat the same mistakes. History tells me that most companies repeat the mistake a second time, however (pick a console manufacturer who are no longer making consoles for an example of that).
With all things being equal, how well would the PS3 have fared if the 360 had launched at the same time it did? How much of an advantage did that one year give the 360?
The PS1 actually had a better environment than the N64 or the Saturn. The momentum from the PS1, the first promise of backwards compatibility and Sony’s ridiculous hype machine are what kept it going in the face of the Dreamcast.
After that, the headstart prevented the Cube and the Xbox from making any inroads. You could say that happened this time as well, but the Wii kinda disproves that and the PS3 wasn’t selling to early adopters either.
As for the Xbox 360’s head start, I think putting the two side by side with their original prices on the exact same launch day and Sony still gets smoked.
I think the original price tag of the PS3 blew a lot of the goodwill that they’d earned with the PS2. I’ve always been the type of gamer to own each of the big three consoles and the PS1 and PS2 were easily my favorites of their respective generations.
The PS2 was such a runaway favorite that I’d pretty much already decided that I’d be getting a PS3 first. Then I heard the price of the PS3 and that dampened my enthusiasm a bit. Later, I remember reading an article about Gran Turismo that mentioned Sony was considering charging per car, per track, etc bringing the cost of the full game up by some huge amount. Their defense was that Sony fans were willing to pay a premium for quality. That article made me start looking into the Xbox 360.
And now I’ve had a 360 for over a year and a half and have several games for it. The last reason I had to even consider a PS3 was the Final Fantasy series and now that’s going to be multi-platform. Short of a re-release of EverQuest as a single player game, there is nothing for me on the PS3.
If Sony can lose someone like me they’re in big trouble.
Much as I love my 360, I’ve already had two red rings and on my third iteration of the console, my games STILL freeze and I lose progress I’ve made often. On my PS3? It only ever freezes when watching streamed media.
And I haven’t touched my wii in like two months.
Of course, I’m not the typical gamer, but I still prefer my PS3 to my other systems. Not to mention, of the last 10 games that I’ve purchased, 9 of them have been on the PS3.
This red ring problem has to be hurting the xbox 360 though, right?
I don’t own a console anymore, but most of my friends do. I know 3 people who have had a red ring issue. Microsoft has got to do something to recover from that kind of bad word of mouth.
Yeah, the RRoD is a pain in the ass, but there are a few games that I really like that I could only get on the 360 (ie: Halo 3). I need to get around to calling the warranty people to get this thing fixed again, tell them it’s the second time it’s gone and see if maybe I can get a new unit out of it.
Other than that, most new games I get I just get for my PC (mmm Fallout 3)
I don’t know, my 360 suffered the RRoD recently but, despite being well out of warranty, Microsoft repaired it at no cost to me at all. If anything it made me feel better about MS.
It is pretty clear that Sony will finish in third place this time around (someone has to). But no way are they going to pull a SEGA and get out of the business entirely. The PS4 will be an interesting development process - to see what lessons they take away from the PS3 cycle and improve on.
It is a shame too - the PS3 is an amazing piece of technology (60GB model owner here). I understand their need to include Blu-Ray so as to define the standard going forward, but adding it to a game console was the death shot. But it is a catch-22, as I believe by Sony including it in the PS3 was a primary driver of the format winning.
On the software side - I don’t think you’ll see almost any multiplatform developers abandon the PS3 for releases. It wouldn’t make sense to discount future iterations of Sony products by ignoring them today. Sure, you’ll see the odd one (Valve - but they contracted out the Orange Box, they could do the same for L4D if they cared to), but EA? Take Two? Ubisoft? Not going to happen.
As an aside - I’ve never really understood the concepts of exclusive titles. As a PS3 owner, I’ll never get to play Halo. Meh - I don’t care. Xbox360 owners won’t get to play LittleBigPlanet (which I tried last night for the first time - very nice). So? I can’t understand the mindset that drives the purchasing decision of an expensive piece of equipment (the console), in order to accomodate a cheaper purchase. But I’ll admit that it is just me.
I never had a PS2 and missed out on the whole set of games for the system. I bought mine used for around $30 from someone here on the Dope, which included controllers and memory cards.
What I can’t believe is that anyone is buying PS2’s new!