Article: Dismal PS3 Launch Forces Sony to Discard Blu Ray[speculation]

That article is utter crap.

I must admit it is very hard to envisage Sony dropping Bluray support from the PS3 after putting so much into it. Very hard... It would take a few knocks, short term.

However, the PS3 represents the lifeblood of the company in many ways, and it is not having the sales it could, because of the price.

There's an argument that says the PS3's success is more important to the survival of the company than Bluray is. Better to have one success than none?

Especially since it'd make playing all currently available PS3 games impossible. I can't imagine that this is seriously being mulled over.

[quote=rdjam]snip...... it is not having the sales it could, because of the price.

...snipQUOTE]


Really??? One had to search before Christmas to buy one if you found one. I know many who could not. Even today, they are available for the most part online, but people report going into place like Best Buy and seeing them one day but not the next and/or not finding the product they want 20/60 gig.

At a lower price they probably couldn't stock ANY but for all we know the sales of the PS3 may be right on target for Sony.

I do not think any company wants to be unable to meet demand because that is an error in manufacturing, distribution, or pricing.

Walked into Best Buy last night to pick one up. Only one 20gb available. Walked across the parking lot to EB Games and bought the last 60gb machine they had. These might be available online now, but are still flying off the shelves in stores. What happened to all the nonsense that Sony would not be able to meet production estimates. The units are selling as soon as Sony makes them. Hardly a dismal launch. Great lil machine btw.

^
I think they are still having production issues, but the demand isn't as high as expected. That is why you can walk into a store and buy one now.

THere's no possible way they'd abandon Blu-Ray on PS3. If for nothing else, it's an anti-piracy measure.

And if the PS3 launch is DIsmal, the 360's launch was even worse, because they barely managed to move 600K in the same time periode last year, 40% less than Sony managed. It's simply people piling on, and in this case HD-DVD fanboys.

A sub-$200 HD-DVD player? Either they'd be losing PS3 size numbers on it, or it's just bull. Given that just the drive with a USB cable is $200, it's impossible for Toshiba not to lose their shirt and ship it with the RAM, Processor and video power to play it.

How about we not create threads from every fifth-rate website posting a garbage article, OK?

Sony did not sell the lowered 2M they projected, but they did sell 1.3M worldwide, and some 820,000 in the US, 490,000 in Japan over xmas.

Depending on which numbers you believe. I believe vgcharts have been tracking game sales for a long time - including individual titles, their numbers are as good as any.

vgcharts

Can someone explain to me how the PS3 could be considered a sales failure if they sold virtually every unit shipped in December and they're still not available everywhere (although slightly easier to find than last month)?

Surpassed for the most recent month? Surpassed for the entire 12 months? Link?

Good question. You know full well if you could not find them ANYWHERE the same people would be saying that the PS3 launch is a dismal failure because Sony can't even produce these things in reasonable quantity. But since some stores have them on shelves for a whole day it's now proof that the PS3 demand isn't high. Funny that these same people are using the fact that you couldn't find a 360 on the shelves last January and February as proof that 360 demand was a lot higher, but they never tell you that MS shipped only 249,000 consoles in January and 161,000 in February to retailers.

I expect the vgchart numbers are probably updated weekly ( a wild guess ) - to close the books for 2006, perhaps by monday Jan 8th (or before) we will know how many PS3s, 360s, wii's are SOLD. I don't really know if there is a way to separate ship from sold, I doubt if anyone can actually know actual numbers except perhaps MSFT and SNE.



vgcharts is a great site for people who follow history of videogames. All time charts of the games since mario are there, and the statistics on videogames and consoles that they have on hand is staggering. (warning - they have a lot of flashing icons and the usual 1000,000th visitor stuff)

Sony are getting killed in Japan, Nintendo now has 75% of the market.

Huh? The Xbox 360 sold twice as many during PS3's launch. Where did you come up with that?

And why do we continue to talk about Japan? No offense to the Japanese gaming market, but they are not the dominant market anymore. They may even be the 3rd market behind the US and European markets. Japanese sales are irrelevant over here and have been for some time.

Because one can buy them easily online now, and most retail stores have them. Rightfully or wrongfully, people compare this to the 360, in which that didn't occur until March. So some are surprised that demand for the PS3 could be fulfilled so quickly. One would have thought that the PS3 had 4M customers "in the bag". But apparently they don't.

Nah, that makes too much sense. The worst part will be when people on this and other forums start ignoring the fantasy of what the article is discussing and start quoting it as fact.

We will not be seeing a $200 player from either camp for quite some time. Toshiba is already subsidizing their low-end 1st and 2nd gen players and if they're making a profit at all on their low-end players, which I doubt, it's already razor thin to begin with.

However, now this discussion has turned entirely gaming without any tendency toward HD DVD or Blu-ray

I had wondered about that very point. Do you have the worldwide supply, (not sales) figures, or is that just your estimate? Because I would be interested to know if there is less demand or more supply relative to the 360 launch at this point in time.

The PS3 hasn't been out for 2 months. It debuted 11/17.

There are a LOT more Wii's there. The US has a short supply of PS3's and even they have more than Japan. The Gamecube put a dent in Sony in Japan when it debuted now look at the PS2.

According to VGAcharts, (and I don't know how accurate that is), the Xbox 360 had sold 951,500 units in the America's by January of 06. Supply didn't meet demand until March or so.

The PS3 has only sold 820,000 so far in the Americas, and it has already reached the point the 360 was at in March. In other words, the 360 had to sell about 1M more units in North America before it could easily be found on the shelf. This indicates that in North America, the demand for the PS3 is lower than it was for the the 360 at the same point in time last year. It's not that the PS3 has more supply, its that it has lower demand. That surprises me.

It's not surprising really. An anemic launch lineup (problematic for all consoles) and a pretty high cost of entry aren't a good combination. They need more good games before demand will increase.

Is that by the begining of January or by the end of January?

I really wouldn't read too much into that. The Japanese are notoriously fickle, and notoriously gadget hungry.
You think fads here are over fast? Some there are measured in days. Final Finatasy 13 comes out and PS3 will sell millions of decks, there is absolutely no doubt. Remember this: When Zelda 64 came out Nintendo moved like 3 million N64s, and 2.5 million of them were in used shops inside of a month(Stacked to the CEILING). Notice that there is a new Zelda game.

There are no game titles to make people want to drop the money right now. There will be and then they'll buy. Right now, they want to play Zelda and play with the gimmick

The only question is how many of them will be in used shops after FF13.

For me, the interesting question is, "how many units did each console have to sell before pent-up demand was satisfied?" I, as somewhat of a guess, estimate that in NA, pent-up demand was met for the 360 in March of 2006. For the PS3, it was January 2007. (The PS3 may not be at that point in other regions, (Japan, EU) so I'm limiting this to only pent-up demand in North America.)

From the VGAcharts, it looks to me like the PS3 met it's pent-up demand with less than 1M units sold in NA, while the 360 met it's Pent-up demand at almost twice that. I think the ebay tracking correlates with this as well.

None of those figures should be taken as accurate, it's just a wild estimate and speculation. Still, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the pent-up demand for the PS3 was lower than what most would expect, and lower than it was for the Xbox360.

I never really cared about Japan numbers, but in terms of worldwide marketshare it is really going to help the PS3 when compared to the 360. It is on course to double the amount of 360's sold in 14 months, in a matter of only 2 months.

There is still some demand in NA and the consoles are moving but it will take a few more killer titles to get the average gamer to consider the high price point. I think Lair will be a pretty good title to show off the system. 1080p, full use of the sixaxis controller, epic style gameplay.

march? lol, i got my 360 with no real effort at all mid january from a best buy. by febuary 06' they were on the shelves 24/7 everywhere.

Yep PS3's sales are slowly down here in NA...but not the Wii.