If the sales continue as they have been for Nintendo and their little white Wii, you’ll be looking at the top-dog for overall console says–best selling console ever. This would push Sony’s PlayStation 2 to the second spot of awesome console victories over the last seven generations of gaming hardware.
Before Sony fans unite to comment storm, remember, the PS2 had a lot of great games and continues to have games coming through for its console. People are still debating the life-span of the Wii product line, regardless to overall sales figures while the PS2 no doubt had a long live and still continues to have a long life, heck 30%+ of gamers still play the darn thing. Sony has been able to utilize the PS2 and its profitability to glide through the initial PS3 sales slump and get the momentum growing for their current generation console.
Yet, some folks are comparing the PlayStation 3 to the GameCube in terms of sales performance.
“During the first 26 month period, the PS3 sold 6.79 million units in the U.S., compared to 6.75 million GameCubes during its first 26 months. While the GameCube finished a distant third last generation, the console was profitable for Nintendo.” (Kotaku)
Before you get out your flame pens, this analogy wasn’t constructed by me, I’m merely the messenger. Again, to defend Sony (read: put on my flame retardant outfit) Sony’s console is slowly building momentum, depending on who’s statistics you read anyway, and their product will eventually become a profitable sale. The GameCube was profitable as well but boasted “dozens” of great games to play while the PS3 obviously is pushing to become the hardcore gamers console of choice with top tier graphics, blu-ray playback and a free online service. GameCube was really just a cube that played some games, a one-trick-poney as it where.
It still feels odd to say Nintendo is winning and Sony isn’t winning (I avoid the term losing to yet again to kill the flames) and… Microsoft?
Microsoft, in my opinion, is in the best possible situation. They’re not being targetted as the number one console and being critizised for holding such a position and they’re not dragging near the bottom to be poked fun at by the industry and bloggers around the world (mainly, the United States.) They’re stealthing by with good sales compared to the last generation console by “improving its fortunes.” The Xbox 360 “sells 18 percent faster than its predecessor, according to NPD figures, and even turned a profit, something the original Xbox never did” according to VentureBeat.
The PlayStation 3 has many years ahead of it and we’re sure plenty of gamers will eventually buy into the console because the technology within that black box is designed to last many years. Considering only 30% of the United States is rolling with an HD-TV it’s not surprising they’re not jumping at the opportunity to own a PlayStation 3. Why is the news all over the PlayStation 3 and talking trash about it? Sony was the console to beat when the PlayStation 2 reigned the industry, to see the console go from #1 to #3 in a single generation is shocking but not new; we saw Nintendo suffer the same fate when the PlayStation originally launched.
But, is the PS3 like the GameCube? There are too many factors to make that comparison, especially considering the growth in the game industry, the growth of storage and video technology and the general acceptance of video games. Hell, you can buy video games at convenience stores in the United States now, the industry isn’t the same as it was in 2001.
Please discuss…but don’t shoot the messenger. 🙂
Quake Live
@The Lund Report: September 2011 NPD:
No surprise in terms of MSFT domination: they made sure they had a platform easy to develop software for => biggest game library => biggest sales numbers.
@Catwoman requires online pass to play in Arkham City
One thing needs to be remembered: people can still (and should!) vote with their wallets.
The only way this is a bait and switch is if they advertise Catwoman and not mention the extra costs.
@Battlefield 3 is ‘mission accomplished’:
I guess this is bound to happen, as games become more and more complex. Testing time should be extended accordingly, but that would add delays to shipping dates.
@EA defends cop killing in Battlefield 3
Link changed to:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/battlefield-3-PC-gaming-FPS-cop-killing-ESRB,13667.html
I all these kinds of controversies, people forget that players control an imaginary character, pointing an imaginary gun and shooting at other imaginary characters.
For f|_|cks sake, we used to “shoot” each other with toy guns since we were kids, half of us being the cops, half being the robbers (thank you, Jordan). And us kids were pretty real, no anti-alias or hardware tessellation required :P.
@Legit Forza 4 users banned for “pirated” copies:
I always love when a DRM scheme turns to crap: legit customers get the bad user experience, while pirates get the clean one. When will they learn …
@Xbox Live Accounts scammed for FIFA DLC
Oh boy … he should also talk with his kids. As for phishing, well, what can I say, keep your eyes peeled.
Jonah, excellent point in terms of phishing at the user support level, and hinting that some companies do bad support. Thumbs up, I never thought of that.
@QOTW:
Oh … I don’t do that. Sorry. I always try to find out something about the game.
@Catwoman requires online pass to play in Arkham City:
Personally I don’t care about this because I only ever buy new games. I also don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing because it will pull people away from buying into the used games “scam” which these stores are making lots of free profit from and give more money to the developers to keep making quality content.
@Battlefield 3 is ‘mission accomplished’:
I worry about this because I think there will be a lot of problems on release which will never get fixed. Have you read that Battlefield review copies will not be sent early due to the Day 1 patch? I hope this isn’t as catastrophic as I think it is.
@QOTW:
The first and only game I ever bought a game I knew nothing about was Need For Speed Prostreet, back when I was about 11 years old and the only gaming experience I had was about 2 hours in Need for Speed Underground 2. I sigh whenever I think back to that day and I remember that I would’ve bought a crappy movie license game if it hadn’t been for my small familiarization with Need For Speed.
The issue with Catwoman is less that she’s DLC but that her DLC status makes her irrelevant to the main story. She was advertised as though she’d be a major player, the artwork makes it look like a Batman-Catwoman adventure, and to find her relegated to this side story with Poison ivy while Talia al Ghul is cast as a would-be love interest is where the real Bait and Switch charges are coming from. It’s not the $10, it’s simply not the story we were sold. They sold us one thing and delivered another, that’s a bait and switch.
xbox live accounts scammed! That’s kind of scary. First play station and now that. How do we know if our money and privacy are secured when playing online? And the statement Mivrosoft issued is just even more concerning. The least they can do is look into what happened instead of just denying it.