EDITORIAL: Sony Divorced From Reality Again
- Scribbled on July 9th, 2009 by Jordan Lund
- Filed in Editorial Content, Interviews, Sony PlayStation 3
In a recent interview Sony’s Jack Tretton said the following regarding the PlayStation 3:
“Hopefully last year is as bad as it gets. I think all indicators are that 2009 is going better than 2008. In 2008, we had a 38 per cent increase in sales and we hit our ten million-units-worldwide goal for PS3 sales… At the worst possible time, if you’re hitting numbers and delivering success… my hope is that as our production efficiencies improve and more great games come to market, the horizon has got to be better for 2009 and 2010.”
Hm, he must not be looking at the same sales numbers I am. In the United States not only is the PS3 doing worse in 2009 than it did in 2008, the bad track record stretches back now to the end of 2008 doing worse than the end of 2007.
Here are the numbers as reported by the NPD Group for North America:
| Month | 09/08 | 08/07 | % Diff |
| November | 378,000 | 466,000 | -18.88% |
| December | 726,000 | 797,600 | -8.98% |
| January | 203,200 | 269,000 | -24.46% |
| February | 276,000 | 280,800 | -1.71% |
| March | 218,000 | 257,000 | -15.18% |
| April | 127,000 | 187,100 | -32.12% |
| May | 131,000 | 208,700 | -37.23% |
It doesn’t look like the June numbers are going to be any better since the PS3 has to over-come sales driven by Metal Gear Solid 4 in 2008, a total of 405,500 units last year.
Even if you eliminate the critical November/December holiday sales, the PS3 numbers for 2009 are still down 20% (January to May) compared to 2008 (955,200 for 2009 vs. 1,202,600 in 2008).
Previously Sony’s gaming division has been buoyed up by PS2 sales which were still going strong despite the poor performance of the PS3. That’s not happening in 2009 with PS2 sales down 42% (January to May) over 2008 (633,200 vs. 1,088,900).
The PSP isn’t doing any better with 2009 sales down 34% over the same period of time 2009 to 2008 (755,700 vs. 1,145,100).
So when someone at Sony says “Hey, 2009 is looking up!” the only proper reaction is to wonder what prescription pharmaceuticals they’re using.
Now it’s tempting to say “Well, that’s just the numbers for North America.” Which is correct. But North America represents a full 50% of the gaming market, if you don’t do well there it doesn’t matter how well you do elsewhere in the world.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
The tiny little fact that the combined hardware sales in those other “not worthy to mention” 50% of the gaming world were higher than in the US didn’t make it onto your well researched fact sheet before writing the article, am I right? So for starters: Here are just the PS3 numbers:
Graph shows sales from Jan 08 to Jun 08
http://tinyurl.com/PS3sales2008
Total sold units by the end of June 08
US 5297705 units
EU 5438970 units
JP 2267302 units = 7706872 units
~45% more than in the US
Graph shows sales from Jan 09 to Jun 09
http://tinyurl.com/PS3sales2009
Total sold units by the end of June 09
US 8836719 units
EU 9180112 units
JP 3281887 units = 12461999 units
~41% more units than in the US
I’m not on prescription pharmaceuticals but those hardware numbers are clearly higher than you made them out to be for “the rest”.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Problem is that you don’t have hard numbers for Europe and Japan, you’re using the “best guess” numbers from VGCharts.
When you have an industry standard company surveying sales in those regions like the NPD does for North America feel free to let me know.
P.S. The best source I can find for Japanese numbers is here:
http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm
2009 year to date in Japan? 568,268, that’s almost 1/2 the numbers seen for the PS3 in the U.S.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:42 am
VGchart’s numbers for the same time period estimates a sale of 589832 consoles which is just 3% off I think we can roughly work with that. And looking at the population:
528,720,588 for NA and
127,433,494 for Japan
I’d say even with only half the units in consumers’ homes it sure looks like the console is selling.
And I’m not sure if there is something like the NPD for Europe or Japan, but I sure will help you search and send you a link if I ever find one.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:00 am
OK, lets look at VGChartz numbers for 2008 and 2009:
Setting the hardware chart for “Cumulative Sales” and a start date of 05 January 2008 and an end date of 05 July 2008 we get a starting cumulative sales of 9,155,977 and an ending cumulative sales of 13,630,873.
That gives us a total sales from January to July 2008 of 4,474,896. These are the Global numbers (all regions) according to VGChartz.
So now we change the dates to 03 January 2009 and 04 July 2009. Now we get a starting number of 18,990,114 and an ending number of 22,447,800.
This gives us a total sales of 3,457,686 – That’s 23% LOWER than the 2008 numbers.
So even using the VGCharts numbers, GLOBAL numbers, the PS3’s sales for 2009 are WORSE than the NPD numbers which were only 20% lower than 2008.
Which is the important comparison I’m making here. We aren’t comparing the PS3 to the Xbox 360 or the Wii… we already know it’s not out-selling either of those systems (51 million Wiis, 31 million 360s, 22 million PS3s as of July 5, 2009).
The problem is that the PS3 isn’t even outselling it’s prior years sales and no matter how you cut it, no matter what numbers you use, the PS3 is DOWN in 2009 vs. 2008.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Ok kids – numbers time… I went ahead and used the VGChartz numbers and crunched them for the PS2, PS3 and PSP. Here are the results:
If you take the cumulative totals for July and subtract the totals from January you can figure out how many machines were sold from January to July 2008.
2008 Total Sales January to July:
PS2 – 3,631,836
PSP – 5,869,226
PS3 – 4,474,896
Now we do the same thing for 2009:
2009 Total Sales January to July:
PS2 – 1,852,218 (49% LOWER than 2008)
PSP – 3,745,066 (36.19% LOWER than 2008)
PS3 – 3,457,686 (22.73% LOWER than 2008)
So, again, we see Sony’s sales are DOWN across the board comparing 2009 to 2008. You’d have to be delusional or lying to say that “all indicators are that 2009 is going better than 2008.”
July 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
To counter the inevitable “But… but… the economy!” argument… Here are the same numbers for the Wii and Xbox 360. Again, global numbers from VGChartz:
2008 Total Sales January to July:
Wii 9,390,741
360 3,408,119
2009 Total Sales January to July:
Wii 7,047,145 (DOWN 24.96% from 2008)
360 4,073,564 (UP! 19.53% from 2008)
Funny… the Xbox 360 seems to be the only system doing fine in 2009. The Wii is still selling more, as usual, but demand seems to have dropped significantly from 2008.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
I never said that the total numbers aren’t lower in 2009 compared to 2008, I merely pointed out that your last paragraph about the US being the deciding market was not correct, as the other territories clearly had more sales.
And if I may speculate on your last comment about Microsoft’s console: With the current Xbox360 price (range) it’s cheaper to pick up a new system than to send one in for repairs. Here in Europe an out of warranty repair costs roughly 140 Euros and a new Arcade is priced at around 175 Euros, so for a few extra bucks you get a new working console covered for 2 years by warranty, and you don’t have to fear that your repaired console quits on you yet again. Which I and others did after our consoles refused to work the way they did. With a Playstation3 still costing around 400 Euros you don’t go out and by an new one, you actually get it fixed.
So I really wonder, how many of those Xbox360 sales are true first buys and not just replacement purchases to keep on gaming. So sales maybe up, but I for one think that the actual user base isn’t growing at the same rate.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Don’t forget that in early September 2008, the Xbox 360 Arcade unit dropped in price from $279 to $199, becoming the cheapest current generation console on the market.
This most certainly is core to why the Xbox 360’s sales are up this year while the more expensive Wii and PlayStation 3’s sales are down.