December NPD:

PS3 726K
X360 1.44M

Add that to the previous totals:

2008 Total Sales:
PS3 – 9,021,799
Xbox 360 – 8,750,722

and you get:

2008 Total Sales:
PS3 – 9,747,799
Xbox 360 – 10,190,722

A difference of 442,923 in favor of the 360.

Sorry PS3 fanboys…

It’s not that it may not be “the best” game on the market now but I’m not in the market for an FPS. I may fall in love with it if I played it, but the hard part is getting me to play the games. The cost barrier is there, the fact that it is an exclusive means they limit their audience (however Killzone is an SCEE game, so it’s exclusive by nature).

But, I’m not going to say a key FPS isn’t important for your system – it’s a console mover here in the States, you need one or two top-notch FPS games. You just do.

As for Uncharted 2, it comes down to me not having any exposure to the franchise. I’m not nearly saying “it sucks” I’m just giving you my honest opinion to the games I’d get if I went out and got a PS3 today. I would pickup LBP too, so that’s enough games to start on a system.

I’m not saying a person is a fanboy for not believing the Xbox 360 is going to dominate the next two years. That’s totally not what I’m saying, I’m saying those that say stuff like:

——–
Maybe the 360 does have more games available but since most of them are complete garbage i don’t think that counts for much. Why don’t you go take a look at Metacritic and see how well “Gears Of Bad Graphics 2? or “Fable 1.5? did compared to LittleBigPlanet???

-or-

I bought the PS3 when it was released for 600 and I got a better deal than you

——–

Fanboys, to me, are those that believe their opinion to be fact. Those that say “mine is better than yours” without knowing how I game, what I play and why I buy one over the other

Give me facts, for any console, and I’ll listen. Give me your opinion with “in my opinion” or “the way I see it” and I’ll listen. Not a big deal.

The other thing I’ve noticed is classic fanboyism is to take an article describing some great value to the PS3 (as I tried to do here) and tell me I’m deluded, cheap and stupid.

I don’t think the Xbox 360 is going to rule for the next two years. The Wii rules this generation, statistics show that. 360 ans PS3 are competitive, although the 360 is winning in statistics and PS3 is gaining ground you are right, Microsoft doesn’t have a 10 year plan at all. They’re a software company trying to make hardware and are used to PC release cycles.

I think Microsoft will build out a new console within two years and start hyping it. Is that bad for Sony? I don’t really know yet as I’ve not seen what Microsoft’s going to do next.

Honestly, Microsoft’s next console should have slow sales up-front due to the massive failure of their current hardware.

While people want to smack me down as a PS3 hater, nobody actually asks me what I think of Microsoft’s console I have PLENTY of bad experiences to go along with the good.

Exclusives definitely don’t mean everything but its been used before to show 360 dominance so lets not totally disregard it.

I don’t think the 360 has no future in the least. I do however think Microsoft is going shorter term with the 360 than Sony is with the PS3.

As for the Wii, its Nintendo and as long as there are little kids, old people, or overly concerned parents the Wii will do well no matter how many crappy games they put out. Its just the way it is. When the Wii hits the 150 mark I’ll pick one up. Its still over-priced for what it has to offer.

I’m not along the naysayers that think either system is going under anytime soon. But to be honest as an owner of both systems its nice to finally hear some decent stuff being said about the PS3. The games and the quality are finally there.

My sons an xbox guy but even he realizes that Resistance has better online then Gears and Halo 3 put together.

You mightn’t like games like Killzone 2 but FPS and multi-player online means a massive amount to most people who game.

The only game of the above PS3 list I wont get is GT5 basically because I prefer the Burnout style of racing games.

Enjoyed the original article but oddly it seems that anyone who doesn’t think the 360 is going to rule for the next 2 years seems like a fanboy to you. What gives?

Sony doesn’t have the power it had last time to lock down some of the big franchise exclusives anymore.

That PSExtreme article doesn’t give me any indicator that the 360 is dead, just like most 360 articles don’t give any indicator the PS3 has no future.

I’ll believe the 360 has no future when I see sales taper off and decline. Perhaps it will be due to Killzone 2, God of War III, Gran Turismo 5, Heavy Rain, Infamous and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – I’ve not seen the evidence of this ‘impact’ as of yet.

Of course, out of all those, God of War III would be the only one I’d probably get. Not everygame is for everyone.

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/4389.html

a qoute from it:

“Then, when the exclusives essentially annihilate the competition – I’m still waiting on the Xbox 360 list that will compete with Killzone 2, God of War III, Gran Turismo 5, Heavy Rain, Infamous and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – the haters won’t have anything left to cling to. What are we going to complain about then?”

However, they are standardized ratings that people do take seriously. Metacritic’s alexa rank is 2k, anything under 100k is a high traffic site, 2k is really really awesome (I would love to own a 2k ranked site). So, like it or not, people use that as a standard of measure when gauging games.

End result, you can’t really tell me that Metacritic rankings don’t count after also telling me the 360 has no future and the games for it suck. If we should discount the opinions of Metacritic as useless imagine what that says for a personal opinion of a single individual like yourself.

I like to gather opinions from gamerankings.com, metacritic.com and friends that might own the game that share like minded opinions of games. Really, if your friend shares the same taste as you and says a game is awesome it probably will be something you’ll buy.

As you said earlier:

“really, what about uncharted, metal gear, resistance 1 and 2, motorstorm 1 and 2, heavenly sword, valikiria chronicles, do you know how good they are or you just rather ignore them to trick yourself into not spending money?”

How would I know how goood they are? By your standards, metacritic isn’t a valid tool to judge game character… should I just guess?

I can’t have an opinion that matters on my own without buying every single game and comparing them to my taste — that’s an expensive proposition. Which leaves many of us to read game reviews to give us guidance. I also use amazon.com ratings when making buying decisions.

count them and you’ll see that the it’s something like 15-17 for the PS3 and 12-14 for the 360

Resistance: Fall of Man averaged an 86 score. The sequel got an 87. This compares to 94 for Gears of War and 93 for Gears of War 2. ”

that’s great, now do you have any opnion on the matter of your own? of everything you think and say it’s based on what other people say?

also metacritic, the same as rottentomatoes is an average and not a valid tool for comparing things,

games like Rock Band and the like or games for portable consoles might get high scores because those scores are based on what they can achieve, not in relation to others within the medium or genre

Castlevania for the PSN is one of the highest rated of the year but the game is awfully dated

for example I owned both and I think that gears 2 is better than LBP, am I automatically wrong because metacritic has a higher score for LBP?

imagine telling an atheist: “you’re wrong because 95% of the people in the world beleive in God and that’s that”

Wow, I thought it would be more

anyway, I came back to post here because of two articles I found interesting about this issue

one for 2009 ps3 exclusives:

http://www.psbeyond.com/features/PS3-Exclusives-to-Look-Out-For-in-2009.1048.html

and one for 360 2009 exclusives:

http://gamer.blorge.com/2009/01/01/xbox-360-sleeper-hit-of-2009/comment-page-2/#comment-63236

just so you’ll understand what I mean when I say that the 360 is obsolete

and remember: I have a 360 that I don’t use since I completed gears 2 in two days, and I would love to see more upcoming games for it but there’s nothing on the horizon, the only want I would consider a AAA-must buy is Alan Wake and it will probably won’t be out ’til 2010 (if it ever comes out)

also let me post my preliminary must buy list of games confirmed for 2009 (it includes PS· and 360):

Killzone 2

Resident Evil 5

Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams

God of War III (IGN has it as q4 2009)

Borderlands

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Final Fantasy XIII

Gran Turismo 5

Heavy Rain

Infamous

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

now that I think about it maybe I’ll buy at least one of the multiplaform games for the 360 to justify my self buyind the console on the first place to play gears 2 (won’t be bioshock 2 though which now it’s a ps3 timed exclusive)

I see this everyday, Jennifer, my wife, is a casual gamer (casualgamerchick.com) and she has no interest in a game like GTA or Gears of War. She understands it enough to know that they’re hugely popular in the market, have a place in the world but doesn’t have any interest in playing them.

Had she reviewed these games she’d have a complete different perspective. Of course, nobody would ever ask her to review a game like that! However, sometimes I wonder if places liek gamespot really don’t have a place when reviewing a casual game. Probably why her site does so well because her perspective aligns well with casual gamers so she speaks their language.

If I’ve not mentioned it, I appreciate everyone’s comments on this and other articles. You could be posting on any other site on the Net, but you chose to put some feeling and passion into mine. Even if you’re angry with my perspective, taking the time to write constructive criticism here means a lot.

Didn’t we have this discussion on Usenet a while back, Jordan?

The opinion of hardcore, experienced gamers like you, me, pretty much anyone else in our little Usenet group, likely most people reading this article, and especially professional game reviewers, is 100% irrelevant when it comes to the Nintendo Wii.

None of us are the target demographic for the games or even the system so it doesn’t really matter in the end what any of us think about the quality of the games on the Wii.

Show me what you think is a good game on the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3 and I’ll show you millions of Wii owners who couldn’t care less.

And for all the talk about how many good games versus how many bad games on each system… I’m not going to play or buy any of the bad games so why would I care? According to your numbers, the difference in the number of “good” games on the 360 and the PS3 compared to the Wii isn’t really that big and I’ll bet you anything that with all the different genres on the two “upper class” systems, there would be a lot more dissension in the ranks in those markets as to whether all those good games are actually good compared to the Wii market, where casual gamers are more likely to try anything that looks like it could be a little bit of fun.

We should provide the best quality, I agree. But, I also find myself not trusting the ratings of games for kids because I’ve never proven them to be correct. They say the game sucks, but the kids like it just fine. Sure, I’d LOVE for these games to be the best quality ever but the development cycles for many of those games are a lot less (as is the price) so in some ways I’m getting what I paid for. But if it makes the kids happy…

On top of that I’ve found very few reliable/good ratings on kids games. For movies, I don’t usually even look because the commercial plays and the kids go “can we go see that!?” No need for ratings if the kids wanna go… I can’t be all like “well, it didn’t get good reviews.”

That’s still no excuse for absolutely horrible kids games -like anything from Wisdom Tree for the NES!

Look at a comparison between, say, Wall-E and Fly Me To The Moon. Kids probably can’t distinguish between the two and really, would be happy with either and yet we, as adults, can recognize that Wall-E is fantastic and Fly Me To the Moon is garbage.

Just because kids aren’t discerning in their entertainment choices doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be provided with the best quality we can.

Reviewers naturally are rating games based on what they think is good and bad, which naturally is going to come from experience with other games. You’re holding one game up against another, you’re basing quality, game design, game play and overall value based on what you know and what you’ve learned.

Well, my daughter is five years old and has none of these lessons, these learned things, she’s got nothing to base her decisions on what is good and what is bad.

I’ve had to work a review for a game for a PR firm for a game called Cocoto’s Magic Circus (and a few others). I felt awful, there was no way I could give the game a fair review because it lacked substance, I could beat it in under two hours and used such basic game mechanics.

My daughter played it and sat there for hours. Perhaps she doesn’t “know any better” or, more than likely, she doesn’t care because she was entertained. I, myself, had found very little entertainment value.

Perhaps game reviewers should be hiring kids and putting them in rooms with cameras and one-way glass and study them. Sounds like a lab experiment but there isn’t really a better way to understand _why_ a game is entertaining to a child; it simply is.

Granted, many Wii games just blow. They’re demographic is for older kids and the quality and play value is awful. But, I see so many games getting dinged for being horrid while kids have no problem with them at all.

The only big problem is parents that are gamers will never purchase said games for their kids because the reviews (from adults) say it’s awful. In my case, the pr firm sent me the games so I didn’t have to buy anything and it wasn’t a risk to me.

I’m not sure of a great way to solve the issue I just know that it’s a bit out of whack to have teenagers, adults and experienced reviewers take a 20 dollar game and say it lacks in all departments when they just don’t know.

I liken this to Wine tasting and wine ratings. Sure, big companies make lots of money on rating a wine. But, it’s also known in the wine world that we should trust our own pallets over the ratings of others. A bad wine to you could be a great wine to me. Does that make me a bad wine drinker or a person with different taste?

Young kids have a different “pallet” when it comes to playing games. Who are we to tell them how it should taste?

Check this out… if you go to Gamerankings.com and compare review scores…

There were 1,283 games released in 2008. Of those, 782 of them got scores averaging less than 70%. I think it’s fair to say any game scoring less than 70% pretty much sucks.

Of those 782 sucky games, 446 of them were Wii and DS titles. That’s 57% of all crappy games belonging to Nintendo platforms.

Which means that Nintendo had more junk games released for their machines than all the other platforms COMBINED.

I try to look at it in terms of a ratio of good games (scoring 80% and higher) to bad games (scoring under 70%).

For every good game on the Wii there were 6.55 bad games released (31 scoring 80% or higher vs. 203 scoring under 70%).

That compares to 2.37 on the Xbox 360 (49 vs. 116) and 1.34 on the PS3 (50 vs. 67).

The PS3 did have fewer games in 2008 and lower sales, but in terms of quality games it had a much more solid lineup. I think that’s because cheap ass developers like Destineer* can’t afford to push their shovelware onto the platform the way they can do the Wii.

*Destineer released 10 games on the Wii in 2008, none of them scored higher than 52%.

Candace Kane’s Candy Factory 52.00%
Summer Sports: Paradise Island 51.43%
Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine 48.00%
Kidz Sports: Crazy Golf 38.25%
WWII Aces 37.33%
Kawasaki Snowmobiles 24.50%
Kawasaki Jet Ski 20.00%
Kidz Sports Ice Hockey 15.00%
Kidz Sports International Soccer 10.00%
London Taxi Rush Hour 10.00%

(p.s. I have TONS more data if you want to see it… e-mail me. jordanlund@gmail.com)

Last year’s figures were also when the Xbox 360 was a bit more costly. Now, with the price reduction and people being fooled into buying the lower “core” model (now called Arcade unit because Marketing Dept got smart), those numbers should be higher just based on cost alone and the fact that the market isn’t saturated yet so they can still push sale figure. Even with the economy in the crapper the sales will probably be pretty impressive for 360.

Of course, those numbers will look like peanuts compared to Wii

For my worldwide sales totals I used:

(Japan)
http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

(Scroll to the bottom for 2008 YTD sales).

PlayStation 3 – 934,799
Xbox 360 – 309,098

Europe was trickier because vgchartz doesn’t provide year by year sales… HOWEVER…

If you take the total consoles sold number at the end of 2007:

http://vgchartz.com/ehweekly.php?date=39446

PS3 3,649,400
X360 5,158,403

and then subtract that from the number sold at the end of 2008:

http://vgchartz.com/ehweekly.php

PS3 8,917,600
X360 10,304,827

Gives us the number sold in 2008.

PS3 – 5,268,200
Xbox 360 – 5,146,424

I had to Google the NPD numbers and collect them month by month.

Month PS3 Xbox 360
January 269,000 230,000
February 280,800 254,600
March 257,000 262,000
April 187,100 188,000
May 208,700 186,600
June 405,500 219,800
July 224,900 204,800
August 185,400 195,200
September 232,400 347,200
October 190,000 371,000
November 378,000 836,000
Totals 2,818,800 3,295,200

The big flaw in the methodology is that we don’t have any December numbers from the NPD while we do for Japan and Europe.

Like I said in the comment above, if December 2008 is anything like 2007 then the paltry 200,000 unit difference in Japan and Europe isn’t going to mean a whole lot. The Xbox 360 will out-sell the PS3 by around 600,000 units worldwide for ’08 instead of 800,000 units.

But, I had a post prior about some of those figures and I was smashed by the International readership saying it was a hot seller in Europe, Asia and Japan.

The real issue is the NPD figures are really only United States. Other charts exist but none are 100% country-to-country. So, it’s up to Microsoft and Sony to lie…I mean, tell us, what their sales are in those regions.

Both have been known to shift in their own favor, but that’s standard practice

In my not so humble opinion (as the guy writing this crap anyway), the 360 may have lost a bit of ground to the PS3 with PS3′s slow growing momentum. But, it’s not enough to go “360 has no future” – it’s not even close to that. Microsoft would REALLY have to screw it up to lose out to Sony in a big way now. I mean, 60% 360 failure rate didn’t make them lose, what will really put a dent in them?

I was surprised at how fast Microsoft grew from their last console and how fast Sony fell considering the PS2 was outselling all consoles COMBINED upon PS3 launch.

But, your facts and figures look about accurate from what I’ve gathered over the last few months. There will be those that will tell you they’re all wrong statistics but … I mean … their pretty damn well reported by now.

“Sony has a slightly higher number of exclusives than 360.”

In 2008 there were 230 Xbox 360 titles released, of those 123 (53%) were exclusive to the platform.

On the PS3 there were 166 titles released, of those only 59 (36%) were exclusive to the platform.

“PS3 sold more consoles and more games in 2008 than 360″

Hmm… not according to the NPD they didn’t.

In North America through the end of November (which is the most recent data we have) the PS3 sold 2,818,800 machines. This compares to 3,295,200 for the 360.

Oh, I know, I know… “but… but… Japan…”

A website called the-magicbox.com tracks sales in Japan:

2008 Year To Date (counts December):
PlayStation 3 934,799
Xbox 360 309,098

So you add those to the NA numbers and you get:

PS3 – 3,753,599
Xbox 360 – 3,604,298

Whoah! The PS3 is up by 100,000 units!

So now we add in the European numbers from vgchartz.com… (also counts December)

PS3 – 5,268,200
Xbox 360 – 5,146,424

2008 Total Sales:
PS3 – 9,021,799
Xbox 360 – 8,750,722

Holy crow! Worldwide the PS3 outsold the 360 by 271,077 units!

Oh, except they didn’t. Remember when I said the NPD numbers for North America were only through November? Yeah, the numbers for Japan and Europe count December.

Last year, in December, in North America alone the 360 outsold the PS3 by some 800,000 units. Want to bet the same thing happens this year? Once the December numbers are in and we have a full count for 2008 you’ll see that miraculous PS3 lead evaporate. Heck, in November this year the 360 outsold the PS3 by 400,000 units.

“resistance 1 and 2 (people who played both series know they’re better than gears)”

Metacritic averages the review scores from all review sites.

Resistance: Fall of Man averaged an 86 score. The sequel got an 87. This compares to 94 for Gears of War and 93 for Gears of War 2.

Looks like you don’t know what you’re talking about. You might want to quit while you’re ahead.

I purchased a 360 because I wanted to play some of the cool new games (Cod2 for instance). I got the Wii because I wanted a Wii like everyone else at the time, and I wanted to Play Zelda, Mario RPG and a few other titles (yeah, and Wii Sports). My kids now use it for Mario Kart, Cocoto Magic Circus and other games.

I also planed to wait in line to buy a PS3 on launch night, the furry and excitement had me hooked. Then, it was impossible to find one so after hitting a few stores and long drives my buddies and I gave up. It didn’t take long before the fever wore off and we saw that they had really no games to play and didn’t for months (Resistance didn’t really interest me, I was already playing FPS’s on the 360).

All-in-all, I do have a ton of technology. The wife and I have our fair share (two mac book pros, mac book, four ipods, etc.). We have a 61″ HD TV DLP which we bought a month or so ago when our other TV was flickering and dying. We have a 32″ Tube (HD) tv as well for gaming (since we didn’t have the living room 61″ at the time).

We buy technology, that’s just part of our lifestyle. We don’t do a lot of home landscaping, gardening and other costly things. We also upgraded our Tivo to an HD Tivo.

Why no PS3? We barely watch movies because we have no real time (World of Warcraft and such take some time). We’re just not a huge movie watching family. Priority puts things in front of a PS3. If I have no desire for a PS3 now, why would I buy one? Just because everyone says I have to have one because its the best system on the planet? Meh.

I am getting a lot out of the 360 and the rest out of the Tivo. Just tonight I was at BestBuy, Blu-Ray disks are still way way too costly, my only drive in that direction would be to rent them on Netflix.

My priorities put a lot of tech stuff in front of a PS3. That may be my 3-point lighting system for my video podcasts, my audio recorders, my mac book pro’s and Final Cut for video editing, my HD camcorder for recording shows, my TV for watching shows, a few games here and there.

There is no room in my life or wallet to put the PS3 as priority number-1. I’m obviously not alone, as the PS3′s not flying off the shelves either.

The Wii is impossible to find but we all know the areas it lacks but people still buy it. Price matters.

To balance the rest of my wants, needs and desires, the PS3 has to be a lot cheaper to fit into my budget.

The Wii and 360 could definitely have been a PS3 and games. But, unless I could buy part of the PS3 in 2005, another part in 2006 and maybe a couple games in 2007 it doesn’t really count

After all, for the price I paid for my cars + house + kitchen table + grill + washer/dryer I could have 10 PS3′s and every game in the library You can always accumulate a bunch of stuff I once bought and equate it to something I can buy now. Unfortunately, even selling all my 360 stuff and Wii used on eBay would barely net me cash to buy a PS3.

Hmm, maybe the Wii if the re-sale price stays as high as it has…

You could have saved the money because honestly the Wii is the one system Im waiting on right now. My friend has it and it hardly ever gets touched.

I got the PS3 and the 360. 2 income household here. But if you are buying just one system cause you want to keep cost down the PS3 works better for a whole media system.

That being said if you get what you need out of your 360 and are not into blu-ray or playing online then I guess its fine for you.

Anyway great article really enjoyed it. Just wanted to point out that for the price of the wii and the 360 you could have a ps3 and games and blu-ray dvds.

When I purchase something for entertainment I don’t consider long term, I consider “time best spent for my money.” Fun per hour if you wanna call it. After x amount of hours of fun I consider it money well spent. I don’t look five years down the line and try to figure out if the device is future proof.

Hell, if you want to consider it an investment then here is how I could do it:

I could buy an Xbox 360 for half the price of a PS3, then take the other half of the cash and invest it in a mutual fund, CD or other interest bearing account. Let that build at roughly 3.08% compounded over three years. Then, if I buy a PS3 in three years at a reduced rate, let’s say $250 by then (hopefully!) I’d be able to purchase the console and a game for the same price as buying a 360 today, plus end with a non-taxed profit of $28.00.

So, I could buy a $600 console now, or buy a console for half the price, let it go obsolete and still buy the PS3 with a game pocket $28 bucks and have six to seven years left of the PS3 lifecycle; Not to mention the game archive in another three years should be double what it is today or more.

That’s “long term investment.”

Though I thought ” yet we may be missing the bigger picture” would have sufficed.

Just another “What do you mean, ‘we’?’ moment, I guess. ‘:P

Happy New Year, people! Let’s all just be glad there are kick*ss consoles to be had, period. Can’t we all just… game along?