PS3 outsold 360 by 28% in last 12 months

I approve of your new-found data-analysis-graph-skillset, Patrick.

Sales must be very much up in mainland Europe on what they were. We know sales are well above the 360 in Japan but it’s not selling very many units week to week over there. In the US the 360 still wins out pretty much every month.

So all those extra sales must be coming from Europe, where lovely ChartTrack won’t give us any figures. Last time we got any info the 360 was still outselling the PS3 in the UK but doing much better everywhere else. I imagine that’s still true for our cousins on the continent, but it’d be interesting to see if the UK’s still a 360-lead country or whether Sony’s finally won them over.

I think PS3 will probably win in the end thanks to its 10 year life cycle.

MS will release a new machine within the next few years, while Sony will hold off until the PS3 reaches its 8 year mark at least.

I’m sure the PS3 will take second place before generation end, but I’m not so sure that Sony will let Microsoft get so much of a head start next time out.

They’ll probably keep supporting the PS3 up to the ten-year mark like they did with the PS2, but if MS launch a new machine in 2012 I’d expect a new Sony console in 2013 at the latest. Let’s just hope they learned a few lessons this time out – both of them.

Of course PS3 will eventually overtake 360. Look at the lifetime sales of PS2. If all those people finally make the leap to PS3 then it could sell huge numbers. I guess the price for many of those could be a little bit higher than the sweet spot. But I think we might see a little price cut before Christmas that will bolster sales even more. You can call me Danny Patchter

You know, I think pretty much all of those people already bought a console if they wanted one. There’s no huge swathe of people still sitting on the sidelines thinking “I’ll just give it another six months”.

The difference this time around is that Sony lost a huge bunch of the casuals and part-time gamers to the DS and the Wii. Regardless of Sony’s future successes, the PS3 isn’t going to achieve anywhere near the level of sales that the PS2 did.

It just hit me how much this Move vs Kinect thing is really going to change the outcome of this gen. If one is sucessful and one isn’t, the winner will almost certainly take second place.

I can’t really see either of them being particularly successful, tbh. Sony will probably sell a few to the hardcore but not many to the casuals, Microsoft the opposite.

Xbot fanyboys gonna love this

@7 But that’s what people said about the Wii. In the end, I’m just an unrealisticly optimistic person.

I don’t think “Xbot fanboys” have much to be concerned about. Sony’s gone from grinding the competition into the dust last generation to “taking over four years to sell almost as many as the rival they claimed they would crap all over”.

While catching up will be a milestone for them, you can hardly call it a ‘success’. Nintendo, after all, is still running away with it and even discounting them the PS3 will never become this generation’s ‘lead’ machine because there are just too many 360s out there for publishers to ignore.

I think both 360 and PS3 ‘fanboys’ should be delighted at this news. With the race being a lot closer than it has been previously, it’ll surely spur both companies on to keep on trying to outdo the other with exclusives, unique content, new titles and other initatives.

Good competition is the best competition right?

I just traded in my 360 for a PS3 like 2 weeks ago and I must say it’s a whole different world. I have a hard time believing I had a 360 this long. Been a Sony guy all my life -.- Oh yeah, I know why. 360 games cost $4 over here while PS3 games are full price. Even by taking that into consideration, PS3 > 360.

Xbox fanyboys & even the Sony fans dismiss the Wii calling it a toy, i honestly agree, while the ps3 & 360 are also toys, they are much, much more attractive to the more mature audience, as far as Sony & MS fanboys are concered, it’s a 1v1 fight between the 360 & the PS3, also considering the price of the ps3, would not surprise me if the total spent on purchasing ps3s excelled the total amount of cash spent on the wii

i dont think ms will let sony over take em, they just slapped sony twice and called it a day with the 360 slim

“while the ps3 & 360 are also toys, they are much, much more attractive to the more mature audience”

The internet would beg to differ.

@15, i could bet that the bulk of wii owners were parents with 12yo kids & under

Even if/when Sony “wins,” it really doesn’t matter any more. MS has basically matched PlayStation in 1½ console generations. Sony had the world at its feet, the word “PlayStation” became the generic term for “console” in many households. All of a sudden, a decade on, Sony is behind and everyone’s celebrating its great strides against the competition, which if you’re Sony, must be pretty humbling.

Still, we now have two major players in the HD-gaming sphere and whether or not Sony edges out MS in the end (which, lets face it, they bloody well should do – they really shouldn’t be behind, tbf.) then we, the gamers, are better off for it.

I wonder how this generation would’ve played out if the Wii had flopped?

@Blerk, Nintendo would have either gone bankrupt or become purely a Handheld console manufacturer

Nintendo doesn’t really do bankrupt. They’ve never made a loss in a full financial year since they started the company, and have cash reserves like you wouldn’t believe.

Hell, they even managed to stay profitable whilst selling the pup that was the gamecube.

Good news indeed.

I’m not sure the 360 slim will have that much of an impact. It may for a couple months, but I stand by what I said the other day that people did want a PS3, but it was simply too expensive at the start and lacked quality titles. Now its cheaper (with maybe another price drop in the future) and the games line up is a lot better, I think many people will finally jump on.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens around the GT5 launch. I think that will be the PS3′s biggest system seller so far.

I was thinking more on the PS3/360 front rather than the ultimate fate of Nintendo. Would the Japanese have taken to the PS3 much earlier or would they have just bought even more DSes? Would the casuals have gone with the cheaper 360 or the more familiar Playstation, or would they have just stuck with their PS2s?

I really must finish my parallel-universe-explore-o-tron machine.

/hands Blerk a spanner

but they would not be able to keep going in the home console business if the wii followed the same path as the cube & N64, it would be unwise to compete @ those levels

So its gone to people saying Sony are teh doomed to oh they will probably overtake the 360, thats a hell of a turnaround. Im amazed they are doing it tbh. The Rrod cost Microsoft a lot i think, if it wasnt for that Microsoft would have buried Sony.

If MS launches a new machine 2012 then we will see it at next years E3 won’t we? I really doubt it. I doubt they will launch a new Xbox in the coming 4 years tbh.

It all depends if Kinect tanks or not.

“So its gone to people saying Sony are teh doomed…”

I think most people were saying that because they’ve managed to lose somewhere in the order of $4.5bn this generation.

Comparing the life-time sales of the PS2 to the PS3 is silly. Do you know how many units the PS2 had shipped at this point in its lifespan? Almost 100 million. (http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/051130e.pdf)

Congrats to Sony for closing the gap. They have had a good year with some very strong releases, and they deserve the success. But the reality of the matter is that both the PS3 and the 360 are under-performing.

Gamers can ignore the Wii all they want (despite all it’s great games) but it’s the reigning console of this generation, and it will stay that way.

WRT where all the PS2 owners went I suspect they stopped gaming. They grew tired of it. The new generation has other things to do (facebook and fucking each others brains out at Ibiza being the two main contenders) than buy consoles and games.

The gaming population is shrinking.

“The gaming population is shrinking.”

Untrue. Many moved to other devices (handhelds / phones / web). The total numbers seem to up.

@30 They all bought different consoles. Some bought the 360, some bought the PS3, and quite a significantly large number bought the Wii.

Sorry gamers, but the Wii exists. Stop pretending it doesn’t. And at at last count, it’s shipped over 72 million units. Most of the highest selling games of this generation are also Wii games.

You put the number of sales between all 3 consoles this generation compared to the last generation, and the figures are indeed up.

Do you know why the PS2 did infinitely better than any of these consoles, to the point where consumers barely paid any attention to any other format? Because it successfully managed to blend both casual and hardcore gaming together.

4.5bn wow imo, all companies lose money when they launch a product unless your Ninty. Like Boris said Nintendo are the only winners this generation, even if i cant get into the console myself. I think by this gen is out Sony will be a good 10m ahead of the 360.

Im amazed that even though Sony fucked it all up, launched a machine at £525, had no games, online service was crap, Microsoft still possibly couldnt beat them.

Sony struggled through on the power of their brand alone at first. It’s only in the last couple of years where they’ve actually started doing things right again.

Brand is a very powerful thing, and Microsoft’s Xbox brand just couldn’t compete with Sony’s early on. Next generation they’re in a stronger position, but I still think Sony has a significant edge in brand recognition.

That’s crap TH. Most companies would have gone bankrupt with losses like that.

For comparison, previous product launches cost Sony somewhere in the order of $400m, which was made back within a couple of years. They’ll never make back the money they lost on the PS3, much like Microsoft will never make back the money they lost on the original xbox.

@33 Technically Microsoft are beating them.

Not only have they shifted more consoles overall, but the console also has a higher attach rate, and they make a hell of a lot more profit, whereas Sony has consistently been reporting losses up until recently.

How come they didnt then? PT

Edit Its like some other guy said a few days eariler, Microsoft are making the same mistakes with Kinect like Sony did with the Ps3 in its eariler days, business people these days it makes you wonder how they even get the jobs.

@TH: They took out massive loans and rode the walrus (Sony’s debt stood at over $10bn last year).

I just checked the historical numbers for the PS1 / PS2 launches. When the PS1 launched the division still posted a profit, when the PS2 launched they lost $450m, and the following year immediately covered that by making $630m. The PS3 situation is absolutely nothing like that… it went:

$1971m loss
$1080m loss
$664m loss
$900m loss

(that last number is iffy as it’s now the NP&D division rather than the gaming division)

i don’t see the wii as a “true” home console since the third party support is atrocious, the only multiplat game to sell over 1mil on it was crapped down version of CoD: WaW, in my personal opinion it cannot replace a 360 or ps3 as a home console, every single multiplat game which makes it to the wii is incredibly cut down & nearly matches the ps2 version, a console made a decade ago.
While the exclusives influences your initial purchase, it’s the multiplatform games which keep u around which the wii is lacking

Owch based on that id expect the Ps4 to be what the Wii is to the Gamecube same hardware only enhanced basically. Sony cant afford another big jump in hardware again.

I could bet Sony will keep PSN more or less the same & carry it onto the ps4, cept they will do same week releases with full downloadable games which should have already happened, also hope they gave like a 5-10% discount for PS+ members making their subscription service that much more attractive(they may actually use PS+ to make us play online games, they have seen how much MS have proffited off of this)
infact i’d expect (& hope) the ps4 will be the same as the ps3, with certain differences: a more powerful version of the cell processor (would be a waste of time if they made a more pc like processor), much larger memory (shared this time, dedication likely caused a drop in FPS), a much better graphics card (wait for MS to release their’s then make sure your’s looks better) & definately a cheaper entry point is nessecary with a better selection of games @ or near the release date

@41 Yep.

Its not really the hardware itself that matters anymore. Its the service that runs on it. Xbox Live and PlayStation Network ARE Microsoft and Sony’s bread and butter – or atleast will be in the future.

They will just keep improving each service then bang it onto another piece of hardware every few years. That’s the way its going.

The “Wii method” of designing your hardware is perfectly legitimate, though. PCs don’t get reinvented every few years, they just evolve what they have.

There’s really no reason for either Sony or Microsoft to reinvent the wheel every time out. Take what you have, double (at least) the processor capacity, bung a load more memory in it, slot in the latest version of the graphics chip, throw a bit more hard drive space in, swap out the DVD drive (one of you!) and bob’s your uncle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9y4iXAso4I

GO SONY GO!

theres a rumour that these are the marvel and capcom characters for marvel vs capcom
MARVEL
•Captain America
•Deadpool
•Dr Doom
•Elektra
•Emma Frost
•Hulk
•Iron Man
•Juggernaut
•Magneto
•Mr Fantastic
•She Hulk
•Shuma-Gorath
•Spider-Man
•Super Skrull
•Taskmaster
•Thor
•War Machine
•Wolverine
•X-23
CAPCOM
•Akuma (Street Fighter)
•Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)
•Amaterasu (Okami)
•Arthur (Ghosts ‘n Goblins)
•Chun-Li (Street Fighter)
•Chuck (Dead Rising)
•Chris (Resident Evil)
•Dante (Devil May Cry)
•Felicia (Darkstalkers)
•Hsien-Ko (Darkstalkers)
•Mike Haggar (Final Fight)
•Morrigan (Darkstalkers)
•Ryu (Street Fighter)
•Spencer (Bionic Commando)
•Trish (Devil May Cry)
•Tron Bonne (Mega Man Legends)
•Viewtiful Joe (Viewtiful Joe)
•Zero (Mega Man

lol wrong thread , and already proven to be fake list

@43 No disc drive at all? Pffttt…. i want my discs thank you.
Should be optional i guess. Maybe two different versions of the console. 1 console option having an extra large hard drive and then another option having the disc drive and a smaller hard drive so that people get to choose disc or digital distribution as there main source of gaming. I’ll choose the disc and hard drive. I am not of fan of Digital content shit, its easier for the companies to rip you off that way.

idk what Blerk means by “swap out the DVD drive”

Well I meant that they need to replace it with a Blu-Ray drive. Or a ‘proprietary-format-fuck-you-Sony’ drive. DVD’s not going to cut it next gen, is it?

oh, i got confused because you said “(one of you!)” and i know sony had already done away with dvd by going bluray so it threw me off.