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

[js3]

NexGenWars

Re:Before anyone mentions NexGenWars

[archen]

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.

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.

Vegonomics

[yakumo.unr]

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=212

never a truer word on this was spoke..

Fuzzy math

[voice_of_all_reason]

You really have to take the PS3 sales figure and double it, though.

Cuz each PS3 sells twice. Once at the store, and then again on ebay...

Ebay numbers wrong!

[DinZy]

Those numbers are the max systems that were available on ebay not the total sold. At one point there were 26000 Wiis and approximately 50 wiis were selling each minute, while more auctions were being listed.

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.

Heh looks like Sony is a bit embarased

[falcon5768]

I couldn't find any sales figures for the PS3, just word that the company has sold all the units it shipped.

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?

Too early to tell...

[BTWR]

Didn't Dreamcast sell very well at first too? We need to reserve judgement on all 3 consoles for at least a year (maybe more, or maybe less for the 360) before seeing who the winners/losers are.

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...

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.

How many of those were busted?

[SilentChris]

I always have to question whether or not those numbers can be trusted.

I bought my Wii and received it early last week. Plug it in, have it find my WPA-encrypted wireless network and proceed with my first system update. You need the firmware update to do anything online. Bong -- 110213 error (Google it -- a good number of people got it). Afterwards the system refused to go online (no virtual console goodness, no more firmware updates, etc). The predominant opinion is that the Wii doesn't CRC the firmware before installing it, resulting in semi-bricked consoles.

Called up Nintendo and, after 30 minutes on hold, I got someone. To their credit, they immediately sent another console out (received it yesterday). It was already updated to the latest firmware. Looks refurbished, but I guess I don't have a choice.

I'm personally very interested in what percentage of those numbers are "usable" systems. 95%? 99%? Even if only 1% are busted, that's still a considerable number of machines.

Here's to you, Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fan...

[everphilski]

Here's to you, Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll!
Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll!
Sitting at home in your parents basement with your PS1 and 2 and 3...

Maaaaaaan, thats a lot of consoooooooles....
Or, Mr. Troll, are you playing with a wii?
Tell me, Mr. Troll-man?
So here's to you, Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll...
Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Trooo-oooll!!!

Official PS3 numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't reveal the exact number of units sold in US as that's a trade secret, but both units were sold.

The Math....

[Duncan3]

Sony loses $300+ per unit.
Retailer makes maybe $50 after they pay all the extra security.
Ebayers make $500-1500/unit minus...
the Ebay makes 5.25% + Paypal 2.90% = 8.15% of that (more then the retailer most likely)
And then of course all the violence, injuries, and robberies.

Sony got screwed royally, and everyone else won the lottery.

Console developers need to get their shit together and learn what a Dutch Auction is.

Re:It's a manufacturing race...

[Tim Browse]

If Nintendo keeps manufacturing units and selling them, they will sell games and make money.

This is precisely the kind of insightful business acumen that I come to slashdot for.

Re:WTF ?

[fuzz6y]

As it reads, 454,000 SOFTWARE purchases exceeds 75% of all HARDWARE purchase(r)s. Does that mean 75% of all wii purchases, or 75% of all console purchases ? If it's the latter, does that mean non-wii owners have been buying this game (if that's at all possible) ?

If you see two ways to interperet a statement, and one of them doesn't make any fucking sense to you, go with the other one.

Re:How hard is it to find a Wii at the moment

[Kankraka]

Last weekend I was at EB, they'd just sold out their last one. Not five minutes later there was a purolator truck outside and a guy unloading another shipment of Wii's and Wii accessories. Those too were being snapped up pretty quick, but the crowning moment of being there? Hearing this:

Customer: Hi, I'd like Twilight Princess for PS3.

EB Employee: Uhm... What?

Customer: Zelda, for PS3

EB Employee: Uhh, yeah.. that's not for PS3, that's a Nintendo Wii game.

Customer: So...?

EB Employee: Ma'am, you need to have a Nintendo Wii *points to the display beside the counter* to play Twilight Princess, or a Game Cube, when it's released for that.

Customer: So I can't play Zelda on PS3?

EB Employee: No.

Customer: So I spent 5 hours in the cold to buy my son a PS3, so he could play the new Zelda, but now he can't?

EB Employee: The new Zelda is for Wii, not PS3, I can show you our PS3 selection if you'd like?

Customer: No, I want Zelda for PS3.

and it pretty much continued like that for a couple minutes before she grasped the concept that she wasn't going to be playing zelda on her ps3. Makes me wonder how many other confused non-gamers are out there in a similar situation. :)

Re:The Counter-Strike of Game Consoles

[zapp]

Wow... there is only one thing I can say to that:

TL;DR

(too long, didn't read)

Seriously, does your keyboard have an enter key?

Re:The Counter-Strike of Game Consoles

[genooma]

Is this a convention of people who refuse to use line breaks. I'm in.

Re:How hard is it to find a Wii at the moment

[edxwelch]

She probably spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to get a CD into her iPod.