Wii Outselling PS3 in Japan

saintory writes "Apparently the Japanese console consumers are sinking their teeth into the modest Wii and are not as interested in the power-packed PS3. In fact, the Wii is outselling Sony's new console by a factor of almost 2:1. The number of PS3s sold into the Japanese market (466,716) falls well short of the million Sony had planned for the end of 2006. 989,118 Wii consoles have been sold in Japan in the same time span. From the article: 'Both Sony and Nintendo are projecting selling 6 million consoles by the end of March. Sony expects to start shipping the PS3 to Europe sometime that month as well. Straggling far behind Sony and Nintendo in the Enterbrain survey was Microsoft's Xbox 360, which had sold 290,467 since its Japan debut in December 2005. Selling machines in large numbers is crucial in the gaming business because it encourages software companies to make more games to play on the machines, which in turn boosts console sales.'"

Comments

are we surprised?

[Thansal]

No, of course not. why?

Because Sony has not made as many PS3s as Nintendo has made Wiis. Rather simple isn't it?
Are we surprised that the 360 is tanking? nope, because it doesn't apeal to the japanese market (and it does not have the fanbase that Nintendo and Sony have).

The real question is how will the number end up once sony gets production going at a decent speed?

Other peopel have pointed out (and after research I now have to agree) that the PS3 isn't selling in the USA (if any one wants ot buy a PS3, Circuit City has 60gig versions in stock). Yet is is still a chalange (though not impossible) to buy a Wii despite much higher production levels.

Re:are we surprised?

[buffer-overflowed]

Consumers don't care about HD. They don't. If they did, the film industry wouldn't be using 35mm film and the equivalent of 1080p24(which is even *lower* resolution and speed than modern 35mm stocks) for digital when making movies in order to save on costs. There are, and have been film stocks with much higher resolution available for quite a long time, in fact 35mm all but completely replaced higher resolution stocks due to the savings in the early 90s. 70mm used to be a lot more common than it is now. 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, the special effects sequences for close encounters, to name three things, were all shot on 70mm. And of course, there's also IMAX. How many movies get shot on IMAX in a given year? 8, I think.

So yea, people may claim they want HD. But they don't. No one watches a DVD now and goes "damn, this sucks." Few went to the theatre for the new Star Wars films and bitched about the fact that the resolution was a fraction of traditional 35mm stocks. Even on my setup (720p native projector onto a 102" glass-beaded screen) which makes most people's "huge" HDTVs look positively tiny. I have *yet* to hear someone complain about DVDs on my setup, they're blown away by how theatre-like the setup is. Would a Blu-ray or an HD-DVD player improve that? Yea, probably, but it's not worth the frickin' money when no one complains about it now. Same logic the film industry uses in not using higher-resolution stocks and switching to digital. I think they know their stuff personally. Even if they are trying to market the opposite to the unwashed masses.

The fact is, neither HD format, or existing HD televisions can display the majority of the information contained on a theoretical pristine 35mm film print even from pre-WW2(and stock/grain quality has advanced a lot since then). So, if you really want quality, pick up a projector and some reels. The resolution blows everything else out of the water atm, and that's the only advantage it really has, and I mean money is no object when it comes to picture quality, right? DVDs offered a ton of convienance features over VHS tapes, no rewinding, start/stop, extra content in the form of multiple audio tracks, etc. The HD formats offer... resolution. At 10-20 times the price for a player, 2-4x the price per movie, and with a fraction of the selection. Man, what a frickin' deal! And this isn't even going into things like ideal view distance.

The future is downloaded / on the demand content because it offers substantive advantages over DVD.

Re:This is news because...

[dctoastman]

Um, the fact that the PS3 is no longer selling out (at least here in the States) should be a telling factor.

And maybe I should tell you about the two WalMarts, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, Gamestop, and EB Games, all of which have PS3 stock. (Not to mention nearby (but inconvenient) Toys R Us stores).

Sony does have enough supply to fulfill demand now. Demand is just really low.

Wii PS3. Why?

[mattpointblank]

My friend has a Wii and I've played several times, and this is what I told him regarding the PS3 vs Wii debate (full disclosure: I've never played a PS3):

When I first played a games console, oh, back in the halcyon days of 1992 or so, it was a Sega Mega Drive (aka "Genesis" in the US). It was a whole new experience for me, being able to interact with an onscreen character using a handheld controller. It was a new world and I loved it and was introduced to a whole wealth of other systems.

Fastforward 13 years and nothing has really changed. Games look better, are more imaginative and offer me more satisfying results than grabbing rings and power-ups. But the gaming concept itself is still pretty much the same. We all laze around on couches, plugged into the console, and gradually fall asleep in marathon gaming sessions.

2006: enter the Wii (no pun). I was a little skeptical after seeing the ads and the less-than-impressive graphics, but being there when my friend first plugged his Wii in was like being transported back to when I was 6 again. I was genuinely excited and amused playing WiiSports, with the new concept the controller had brought to my gaming.

The PS3 might look prettier and have more power. It even plays DVDs and other things I have no interest in. But what it doesn't have is a revolutionary new design that's been the most innovative thing (at least, in my personal gaming history) since I first started playing consoles. The Wii has got me up off the couch and really interacting with my games, while the PS3, however real it may look compared to the Wii's bobble-headed "Miis", is just another couch-sitting epic.