Sony Ships 2 Million PS3s, May Still Miss Goal

Despite the news (at Gamasutra) that Sony has already shipped 2 Million PlayStation 3s, Next Generation reports that analysts are still doomcasting Sony's early next-gen efforts. The Japanese investment firm Nomura is now saying they expect Sony to be able to ship approximately 4.5 million PlayStation 3 units by the end of the fiscal year in March. This is only 75% of the company's stated goal. From the article: "Despite early manufacturing issues and a subsequent European delay, Sony has maintained that it will still ship 6 million PS3s worldwide by the end of its fiscal year. The company recently said that it met its goal to ship 1 million units in North America by the end of calendar year 2006. NPD Group reported last week that the console sold 490,700 units in the US in December, with 687,300 sold life-to-date in the region." I think it's still a mite early to say what's going to be happening in March, but there are a lot of unhappy investors listening to these reports right now.

Comments

Re:BFD

[GeckoX]

Yep, this is par for the course for a new Sony console. The only thing that _might_ make this fail is the other consoles. As for this release though, there are never many great games available when a new sony console comes out. This is for a number of reasons, but most revolve around the more complicated system they always end up putting out. It takes a couple of years to learn how to squeeze everything out of a new piece of sony kit.

There are always a certain number of people that buy a new PS immediately, but they've never had a console that just flew off the shelves at launch. They're like the locomotive in the industry, take a long time to get moving, but once they are look out. Prices fall, footprint reduces, games come out in droves, sales grow and grow and grow.

IMHO, all we can tell at this point about the current state of the consoles is this:
a) It's too early as usual to weigh in on Sony, but the indicators show similar success to previous launches.
b) MS is in a typical holding pattern. Picking up more sales due to the timing of games being available and specifically, a couple games that the japanese market is actually interested in.
c) The Wii is off to a great start...time will tell, but unless they screw up the games coming down the pipe in the future, it should be Nintendo's most successful console to date.

Don't expect much to change for at LEAST another year. Now taking bets on how many articles on this subject we'll see here within that time...I think we're already well over half a dozen ;)