Lifetime UK console sales revealed

Wow, nice to see these for a change

There’s as many PSP units sold as Xbox 360s? WOW! I sure didn’t expect *that*!

If you do the pro rata thing, PS3 is about 100k behind 360 which – given differences on price and the fact the MS console had 15 months unchallenged on the market – is a strong performance. Just thought I’d get that in before G1GA arrives tell all us “PlayStation fanboys” that we have abandoned Sony and the PS3 has failed here too…..

Interesting! Those Wii figures are really quite astonishing – that’s half the PS2′s total sales in a fraction of the time. I think I’m a little surprised that the PS2 and the DS are as low as they are, actually – it seems like every bugger in the country has one.

I was shocked to find the PS3 ahead of the 360 in europe (by 300,000).

So MS have been talking rubbish then..?

The “360 vs PS3 in Europe” thing is a point of contention. Both sides will claim victory based on slightly different ways of adding up the figures and slightly different definitions of what counts as ‘Europe’.

I think the safest thing to say is that it’s near-as-dammit neck and neck in Europe. Mainland Europe is super pro-Sony, on the whole.

MCV seem to think that the PS3 is 300,000 after looking at the figures today.

Blerk,

I’m pretty sure that when SCEE said they were ahead in Europe a month or two ago, they confirmed they were talking about Europe (geographical) and not PAL – so excluding Australia, NZ et al.

There’s so much smoke and mirrors involved that you can never be sure quite who’s telling the truth, though. And they all talk about boxes shipped to retailers rather than sold too, which obfuscates even more.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see Sony slightly in the lead, though. Historically that’s always been the case.

Aha, SCEI said over a year ago that their own console figures, henceforth, would only be “sold to consumer” and not “shipped to retailer”. I’m not sure if MS and Ninty have or have not confirmed the same.

;o)

Cort: That’s most likely bullshit though, cos frankly, how the hell would they know?

I’m sure MS will be pretty happy with that. At one point their UK lead over the PS3 was more or less exactly 1m, I think that was a year or more back so it’s actually increased since. Given the market dominance Sony had last generation, it’s a good show by them to be even on level footing. It’ll be interesting to see how much difference another holiday with the 360 arcade SKU makes and whether a presumed PS3 price cut this year counteracts that or more.

Also good to see hard evidence that Sony are doing much better in Europe than elsewhere.

5m Wii’s at this point is mental though.

Yeah, I’d heard that a while back too Cort.

There’s still a lot of confusion with regard to that shipped / sold thing. It’s very simple, Sony changed to the same method that Nintendo / MS use.

Sold = Sold to retailers. You can see it discussed if you look for the conference call where they announced it.

“Just thought I’d get that in before G1GA arrives tell all us “PlayStation fanboys” that we have abandoned Sony and the PS3 has failed here too…..”

Ahh man…

I’ve got nothing to say now!

Don’t forget to factor the 360 failure rate being somewhere in the region of a 100% on all 1st generation units, which are now either in the bin, in second hand stock, on eBay as parts or about to fail again.

And the 10 – 30% failure rate they have on the 2nd generation 360′s and what are they on now… 3rd or 4th gen with E74 & still RROD & Disk problems… lets say 5% – 10% failure rate.

I’d say Sony are ‘way’ ahead on actual working systems in peoples homes in reality.

However I think the 360 has the bigger slice of ‘hardcore’ demographic, which equates to higher game sales.

360 in terms of Software is fantastic but the hardware is diabolical IMO (I’m a bitter owner as I’ve had 4 360 – 3 of which were brand new (last year) and failed out of the box for one reason or another).

I think once Sony drop the price it will be over for MS and I think if Sony pay as much attention to the ‘Casuals’ as they have done towards 1st part hardcore games and launch Eye Pet etc. with the price drop they may even start creep up on Nintendo.

Then again… history in this industry has a habit of being pretty unpredictable.

Even if the PS3 isnt ahead in Europe by 300,000 its crazy its as close as it is!

With the 360 head start I didnt expect it to be close at all…

G1GA,

;o)

Newbie101 – That’s “Non UK” Europe… why would the PS3 being ahead there surprise you? The 360 has always been a dead duck in mainland Europe.

Is the failure rate on first generation 360s really around 100%? I find that hard to believe.

Hehe, but seriously, even though the PS3 maight not be too far behind ‘pro-rata’, I can’t see it ever taking the lead between the two.

Surely from this point on, any PS3 price drop is going to be matched by either a 360 price drop, or some kind of extra value bundles to counter it.

Just goes to show the importance of getting to market first.

You might have inferior hardware and slower sales, but you very well might end up selling a whole lot more than your rivals.

@dirigiblebill: We have leaked numbers from an internal MS engineer which put it at 645k (8.8%) in November 06 and 1.2m in Feb 07 (10%). In Feb 08 SquareTrade (Warranty provider) stated a 16.4% failure rate.

The truth is probably in there somewhere.

@gigahurtz – What you’re failing to understand about a ps3 price drop is the ps2 owners who are waiting until the ps3 is 200 quid or less before they buy one. I know quite a few who are unwilling to pay 300 quid.

They’d have already bought a 360 by now if they wanted one…

Here’s the link to the actual presentation:
http://www.gamegroup.plc.uk/gg/investors/reports/2009rp/prelim_09/prelim_trans.pdf

(for those too lazy to actually read the original link!)

Also… we got these same console install base numbers back in January:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/console-installed-base-reaches-22m-in-uk

First off, the 360 has never had a failure rate of 100%, 30% was the highest ever estimate.

2nd, to GIGAHURTZ, getting to the market firsat didn’t help the Dreamcast, which lets face it, was annhilated by the PS2.

3rd, Pretty surprised by the DS success given the practically no games I want that it has.

Also, it’d be interesting to see the resell rate on some of these, methinks the Wii might be quite high.

@G1GA
“Surely from this point on, any PS3 price drop is going to be matched by either a 360 price drop, or some kind of extra value bundles to counter it.”

Thing is the 360 hasn’t got too many more places to go price wise. It’s already fantastic value. It’s really surprising that the PS3 is doing as well as it is whilst maintaining the price it has. So MS responding to a substantial PS3 price cut with another of their own isn’t going to cut it. Maybe a redesign to a smaller footprint – it would certainly help in Japan.

Yeah, I reckon the next step for the 360 is a redesign, the next step for the PS3 is a price cut.

Of course… MS could be complete and utter retards and not go for a redesign, despite seeing what it’s done for other machine’s sales over the years.

Monthly averages, according to TheSixthAxis:

Wii: 181,481
DS: 183,333
PS2: 100,000
360: 82,051
PS3: 79,166
PSP: 78,048

EDIT: Monthly averages over lifetime.

Time to state the obvious… the Wii and DS are complete monsters.

The PS2′s still selling 100k a month?

Blerk, figures are for lifetime monthly average.

but sony still holds the most market share, must be nice for microsoft to only focus on one system.

Ah, I see – my stupid.

Those numbers are old. From Jan 09

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/console-installed-base-reaches-22m-in-uk

Old in that they have already been published, yes, but not at all old in the way that they are obsolete. Figures such as these are never up to the previous week. These are to the end of the last available quarter, which is fine.

I’d rather see updated numbers with the last three months included (with Easter sales too)

“First off, the 360 has never had a failure rate of 100%, 30% was the highest ever estimate.”

I rekon’ it was much higher than 30% on the first gen 360.

If MS say it’s 30% you can bank on it was double that… besides 30% is still amazingly bad for those figures don’t… but hey… I guess no one but MS will have any idea what the real figure is but I bet most of those 1st gen 360s are out of action now.

I’ll admit that they seem to have things somewhat under control these days but nonetheless I’m bloody certain that 300,000 lead they have isn’t real.

Didn’t they sell around 8 – 9 million in the first year or so. So lets just say that 15% of em’ are out of action by now… that just shaved off 1.3 million units.

I’m not trying to bash the 360… just that with even lower failure rates than MS stated themselves (within year one) I would say Sony have more PS3 out there, whether they’re in use is another matter

MS hasn’t ever given a failure rate. The only numbers we’ve ever got were the ones I put in my post above.

That aside, it wouldn’t actually affect the sold numbers provided by companies that we’re seeing in the report. It could possibly affect the shipped numbers as depending on how a retailer processes a replacement it could show up as another machine MS has shipped to a retailer.

Though I’d guess that most people deal direct with MS if their 360 breaks.

Perhaps MS never said 1/3 fail or 30% but however you dress it up or tweak the figures… There must be at least a million out of action.

Just my opinion and based on what I’ve read and experienced myself, friends and many work colegues… Every single person I’ve met that has owned a 360 has had it break… Oh and ask the UPS guy how many they pickup and return in a week when you have to send your own back for repair (i did) and he’ll probably tell you it’s keeping them in business shipping them to Germany and back.

Anyway I don’t want to sound like an anti MS type… It’s just how I see it and I think the real install base is probably worse than any MS exec would have us believe.

Btw: typing this much on the iPhone is giving me tendinitis

@onyx

bottom line you have no clue what you are talking about. I personally own 2 360s a first and second generation model and both my sons have one and none of them have ever failed whereas both my ps3 and my sons have had to be sent back and repaired as defective.so that means that 360s have a 0% failure rate and the ps3 is 100%?

See how ridiculous anecdotal evidence is? Both consoles have had their issues MS had bigger ones initially but its old old news.I fail to understand why EVERY single time console sales are discussed somebody has to trot out bullshit like that to try to say Sony is miles ahead.At the end of the day they are’nt ahead of MS now and may never be we shall see if they ever get any momentum but trotting out the excuses every single time its shown they are behind just makes the people using them look silly

thats pure bullshit jacee you are a fucking lying xbot troll. you have a better chance of getting hit by lighting than having two ps3s break at the same time in one house hold. how much did greenturd pay you to come here and say that or did he promise you could lick his ass crack clean at E3.

360 0% failure rate/ps3 100% failure rate?

I was born at night mother fucker,but not last night. Get your punk ass out of here and teach those retarded kids of yours how to use a ps3 properly bitch!

@ Evil – LOL !!!!!! damn evil..tell him how you really feel….

Jacee – I will give you the benefit of doubt and say that what you wrote did happen, but you are in the minority. My brother has replaced his 360 twice since he got it at launch, and has scratched a couple of disks. He nor I have ever had to fix our PS3′s.

@Jacee

“See how ridiculous anecdotal evidence is?”

I understand your point but ‘come on’…ffs… open your eyes.

360 – Great Games – Thriving Comunity – Excellent Online – Sh!t hardware & lots and lots of ‘em break.

Just out of interest what percentage of failure do _you_ think the first gen 360′s have?

Jacee you are officially the new xbot troll king. You sound like a guy who sits at his computer everyday and gets paid by M$ to ease their faults on the internet gaming community.

You sound like some Nebraskan trailer park trash waiting for your check in the mail.

@evil

thanks for the title but until I look under my sink and find your sorry ass living there you can’t speak for what has or has not occurred in my household.

Read what I said I said both my PS3 and my sons had to go back for repair do the math genius my son doesn’t live with me so that would make two households.

My point was about the unreliability of anecdotal evidence in a discussion like this it was not to stir up your Sony blowing fanboy ass like it obviously did