Slashdot Mirror
Sony, Analysts React To PS3 Launch
cdneng2 writes "Sony may be aware that something is just not right. There's a reshuffling of management occurring within Sony. Kazuo Hirai is set to head their videogame unit, as Ken Kutaragi has been bumped to the Sony board. Jack Tretton, former COO for SCEA, is now the president and CEO of that arm of the company. There's no word on the reasoning behind these position shifts. On the same day, Namco announced that they must sell 500,000 games to begin making profit on PS3 games. A Financial Times article confirms speculation on how hard it will be for Sony to make money, as analysts with UBS predict that 30 games must be sold per PS3 for them to break even." To add insult to injury, EA CEO Larry Probst has said PS3 numbers were lower than expected. Current thinking is that Sony managed to ship roughly half of the 400,000 units they were promising.
Why? The PS3's performance effect's Sony's bottom line NOW. We know plenty, like the significant loss Sony is taking on each console sold, the exceptionally low number of units available, and the increasing number of former exclusives dumping Sony and going multi-platform. The linked stories include facts such as Sony having to sell 30 titles per console to make a profit, versus 8 for the PS2, Namco has to sell 500,000 units to break even, etc. There are also educated guesses (not just fanboy guesses but educated guesses by top people at EA, who would know this sort of thing) that Sony has shipped about half of the units they claimed they were going to ship (which was already cut drastically prior to launch). We also have other launches to look at, like the 360 (not so great), Wii (pretty good), and the PS2 (pretty good). Microsoft sold 900,000 units in North America by the end of 2005, another 500,000 in Europe (Can't find much for 2005 in Japan - 62,000 units in the first 3 days, and 103,000 units by April of '06). Sony probably won't even sell as many Worldwide (well, Japan and North America, since they cut out Europe) by the end of '06 as MS did in North America alone in '05.
Nintendo sold 600,000 Wii's in North America in the first eight days of it's launch, and they're aiming for 4 million worldwide by the end of '06. Obviously, it's been a success for Nintendo. Since they've been on the market for the same amount of time, can we not claim the PS3 launch hasn't been that great, and that Sony is hurting?