Game Stooge

EDITORIAL: Sony’s Delusions

• Scribbled on February 5th, 2010 by Jordan Lund
• Filed in Editorial Content, NPD, Sony PlayStation 3

Sony is now moving from being the company of false promises (multiple HDMI ports, all games in 1080p, all games at 60 fps for the PlayStation 3) to the company of false premises.

In a recent interview with IGN, Sony Senior Vice President of Marketing, Peter Dille is quoted as saying:

“I’m confident we’ll be around in 10 years and I can say that because we’ve done it twice. PS3 will be around in 10 years and probably much longer than that. I have my own opinion, but I’ll ask you the question. Do you think the 360 will be around in 10 years?”

Really, Peter? The PS3 is still going to be around in 2020? You do realize that the PS3 is not even close to being as successful as the PS1 and that machine lasted 12 years (1994 to 2006). Based on declining sales and a lack of new software titles, 2010 is looking to be the final year for the PS2 which would give it 10 years (2000 to 2010).

But if we’re to take Dille at his word, and really, since the launch of the PS3, we can rarely take the word of any Sony executive that the PS3 is somehow going to eclipse both of it’s predecessors and become a stunning triumph lasting from 2006 to 2020 – a whopping 14 years. Even if you assume that Dille is just confused and is thinking this is still 2006, and that the 10 year lifespan he’s talking about will come due in 2016, there’s still a fatal flaw in his reasoning.

The idea that the PS3 will eventually out-sell the Xbox 360 is based on the premise that Microsoft is going to stop selling the 360, allowing the PS3 to surge ahead against a new “Next Gen” machine. This was the conventional wisdom back in 2005/2006. Consoles, naturally, have a 5 year lifespan so if you push your hardware to 10 years and everyone else in your generation has quit the market, you stand a chance of jumping into first place – due to no competition.

This plan was first put into practice by Nintendo with the SNES. They had lost the 16 bit generation, but when Sega moved forward with the Saturn and Sony launched the original Playstation, Nintendo held back. In the end they were able to outsell the Sega Genesis but only because Sega had abandoned the platform in favor of the Saturn.

The problem is that nobody can afford to launch a new console generation in 2010 as the original conventional wisdom said 5 years ago. Nobody saw the economic collapse coming. Nobody saw the restrictions on lending which are required to get chip development and production lines up and running. So we aren’t seeing new platforms launch this year the way everyone thought.

That means the 360 isn’t going anywhere. Let’s look at NPD sales for North America (50% of the video gaming market). The Wii, 360 and PS3 have been on sale head to head for 38 months. This does NOT count the year of sales that the 360 had to itself.

Of those 38 months the Wii has taken first place 34 times, a stunning level of dominance. The 360 outsold all comers just three times (November and December 2006, when the Wii and PS3 were hard to find and September, 2007 when Halo 3 launched.) The PS3 has earned first place just once, in September 2009 when the new Slim version was introduced with a significant price cut.

Really, what we’re looking at, is a race for second place. Out of the 38 month period, the Xbox 360 has taken the silver 27 times. It lost out to the PS3 just eight times; the remaining 3 times it did not place 2nd it took 1st. The Wii is rarely in 2nd, having been dropped there just 4 times, the first two months of release, the month Halo 3 came out and the month of the PS3 Slim/Price cut.

Looking at 3rd place, the PS3 is the solid winner, taking last place 30 times out of 38 months. The 360 has claimed that dishonor eight times and the Wii has never dipped to third, not once.

Total North American Sales since November of 2006 put the Wii in a commanding lead with 21,074,900 unit sales, the 360 in a distant second with 13,003,400 machines sold and the PS3 in a solid 3rd with 8,241,400 consoles moved to the public. To give you some idea just how badly the PS3 is doing, it’s been outsold by BOTH the PlayStation 2 and the PSP over the same 11/06 to present timeframe. It’s not even in first place among Sony hardware.

The good news is that 2009 has been the best year for the PS3 yet. It finally broke 1 million units sold in a single month in North America, a milestone that it hasn’t really been close to, ever. Of course, that’s the same milestone that the 360 hit one year after it came out, way back in December of 2006 and has hit every December since then. The Wii is the only console to break 2 million in a month and they’ve done that 3 times, including this past december where they shattered the 3 million mark and were knocking on four!

Even though the PS3 did better in 2009 than they ever have, they still took 3rd place for the year, running behind the 360 by about 400,000 units – 4,770,700 for the 360 and 4,334,500 for the PS3. Both were smoked by the Wii who sold more than the 360 and PS3 combined. 9,594,000 total.

To put things in perspective… in order to catch the Xbox 360 the PS3 needs an entire year where it’s sales match those of 2009 and the Xbox 360 sells nothing. Realistically that’s simply not going to happen.

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