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.

Comments

Before anyone mentions NexGenWars

[AKAImBatman]

Before anyone mentions nexgenwars.com, I think you should all read this forum thread about how the numbers are calculated. To anyone who has even an inkling of statistics and probablity, his methods should stand out as highly flawed. Until we have a good sales history and ample supply with which to predict the sales of these consoles, it would be best to stick to the official figures released by the respective companies and retail tracking organizations. (The latter of which is not yet available.)

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.

It's worth noting that 15,000 PS3 units could be as much as 10% of the North American supply. Given that we don't know the actual figures shipped, it's just as possible that 15,000 is 5% of the supply. Either way, it's a significant percentage of the PS3 consoles.

Re:Before anyone mentions NexGenWars

[Criminally Insane Ro]

If these videos: http://www.vgblogger.com/?p=350/are any clue, I would say that word of mouth advertising will destroy the PS3.

Analysts

[HappySqurriel]

I know you're not to believe analysts, but earlier this week they were reporting that the Wii had 4 times as many units and that the PS3 launched with between 125,000 and 175,000 units ...

Until NPD releases its November numbers or Sony makes an announcement I think those are about as accurate as we're going to get.

Re:Too early to tell...

[JayBlalock]

The Dreamcast was in much the same position as the 360 was last year - it was vastly superior hardware very early to market. The competition at that time, remember, was the PS1 and the N64. (oh, and *snicker* The Saturn) The N64 had already come to be regarded as a cruel joke, and PS1 was showing its age badly, so *everyone* jumped to get a Dreamcast. And for a short time, it was fantastically successful.

Then Sony started lying out their asses about what the PS2 would be like and managed to spread the FUD so thick that people nearly quit buying Dreamcasts completely. (despite the fact that the PS2 was, in reality, only incrementally superior to the DC) Sega's marketing department failed to keep up, and the rest was history.

Point of the story being, the DC situation is unlikely to be repeated in this case. It sort of came out in a weird "in between" time, generationally, rather than this situation where the three consoles have all come out relatively near to each other. (remember, people think of the SNES and the Genesis as being of the same generation, even though they were separated by two years)

So what it's all going to come down to is customer adoption and games. Personally, I think Sony is at an INCREDIBLE disadvantage, one I'd be highly surprised to see them overcome. It's going to come down, I believe, to a slugging match between Microsoft and Nintendo in a war of prettiness and grittiness vs fun and fluffy. And I predict they'll end up at something of an equilibrium, maybe 40% market share each, with the PS3 taking the high-end business but little else.