Slashdot Mirror
Wii, PS3 Sell Big In First Week
Wowzer writes "Nintendo today announced the Wii sold through more than 600,000 units in the Americas in just its first eight days of availability. That's a rate of nearly one per second continuously since the November 19 launch!" From the article: "The company noted that, when taking into account first-party software and accessory sales, Wii sales have thus far amounted to an impressive $190 million. Nintendo also added that sales of the Wii's highly anticipated launch title, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has already has achieved sales of more than 454,000 units in the Americas, a figure which it notes represents in excess of of 75 percent of all hardware purchasers." I couldn't find any sales figures for the PS3, just word that the company has sold all the units it shipped. Gamasutra is also reporting sales figures via Ebay for the two consoles. 15,000 PS3s were sold, while the Wii cracked 27,000 via the popular online auction site.
You think thats because all reports point to less than 200,000 actually being shipped when Sony swore they would be shipping twice that many?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Really? Wow, thanks for clearing that up for me, Sony. And here I was thinking that half of them had been lost somewhere in stockrooms across the country, and another quarter of them were sitting on store shelves while disinterested gamers walked by. I'm certainly glad we got that cleared up.
As of now, "every system Nintendo or Sony makes is sold immediately!" This obviously won't last, and we'll see who eventually comes out on top...
Nintendo may have hit on an important point though. Just dumping your product on the market with a huge shortage before the Christmas season may not be enough. Nintendo has managed to get major numbers out there (4million estimated before Christmas). If it truly is the hot item, then it stands to stomp the PS3 in terms of market penetration. And if the Wii starts ramping up support, it's quite possible that many who planned on getting a PS3 before, ended up forgetting about it because they're perfectly happy with the Wii - which they could at least obtain.
Even the ones who dont flat out hate it, pretty much say its not worth it yet, and the benefits of the system simply are not there compared to the 360.
On the otherhand you have a system thats trying to be different. Everyone knows its not as powerful (infact it got some low marks for that) but its FUN and just about everywhere there are storys of adults and kids playing together.
Until sony does something right, I doubt you will ever see pro-ps3 artcles here or anywhere else thats not paid by Sony in advertising. Simply because as of right now Sony has done nothing right, from dust scratching the system, to poor backwards compatability (after ripping on Microsoft for the same) to forcing Blu-ray on a public that from all reports doesnt care about EITHER HD format.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
How can it 'look' refurbished when it's been out less than two weeks? Given that they opened the box up to do the firmware update before they sent it to you, there are very few pieces of evidence that could identify a refurbished system vs a new one that was plugged in once to install an update.