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Wii Outsells PS3, Blue-ray Outsells HD DVD
njkid1, a regular contributor of GameDaily articles, passed us word that the Wii is handily outselling the PS3 in Japan. Famitsu parent company Enterbrain has figures showing that Nintendo sold 405,000 Wii units last month, while Sony sold 148,000 units of the PS3. While this is probably not something the folks at Sony are overjoyed about, they did have reason to crow this week. They've now announced that cumulative Blu-ray sales have passed the HD DVD format for the first time. Gamasutra has the word, from Sony itself, with some interesting supporting information. Most PS3 owners, it seems, have used their system to watch HD movies. Some full 80 percent plan to buy further HD titles in the future. This is further support for the VideoScan sales figures we discussed last week.
I, for one, am shocked.
-stormin
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Is it really surprising that something that costs less than half the price of a PS3 and offers a completely new style of game play is selling more units?
Given that there are no games to play on the PS3, it makes complete sense that people would be watching movies on it instead. There really has been nothing to push HD-DVD that much so I'm not surprised that Blu-Ray is winning in terms of sales. However, that may change as soon as less-expensive players are released that have more functionality, etc.
In any case, those sales numbers are probably too small right now to bring them any significant returns. I'd wait a year or two before considering whether Sony made a mistake with Blu-Ray or not.
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Just like DVD, most people's first DVD player was a PS2. I was not one of them, I had a standalone DVD player a long time before the PS2 came out and found myself quite disappointed with the DVD playback of the PS2 in terms of quality and usability/controllability. I will not be buying a PS3 anytime soon and do not have a HDTV to see the difference even if I did get one so I would not be buying BlueRay movies. I think that more than anything, this is curiosity since they have the console and have the capability, the games are not so new now, they need to try something new with this $600 piece of hardware to give it some worth. I for one would like to know the sales numbers for standalone next-gen DVD players and/or the stats on people buying BlueRay movies who do not have a PS3. In terms of the format war, BlueRay has still not won but probably will as the combo players hit production given the momentum that this is putting behind it. I personally still feel that BOTH formats are losers and am not interested in either. When and IF I am ever able to afford a HDTV, I will not be able to afford a $500-$1000 DVD player to go along with it. Besides, I will be so excited to have a larger and wide-format screen that the wow will be there for a long time after. Perhaps by the time the upgrade wow has worn off, the combo players will be affordable, but I highly doubt that will happen for about another 3-5 years (the afford ability that is). Just like always, my .02.
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Obviously Blu-Ray has started to sell well after 1,000,000+ Blu-Ray enabled PS3 units ... The question I have is if Blu-Ray will continue to sell well over the next few months ...
I really don't know, but I suspect that a lot of people who bought a PS3 to play games might have bought 1 or 2 Blu-Ray movies simply because they wanted to try the drive out; being that there are few places that currently rent Blu-Ray/HD-DVD movies buying them is the only option for a lot of people. In contrast, I suspect that anyone who has bought any HD-DVD player is likely a movie collector and will buy 1-2 movies every week (or two) for the next couple of years. The question is how big of an impact 1 PS3 will make towards sales as compared to one stand alone HD-DVD player.
Yes there are units in stores now.
However, PS3 sales are still somewhat lower than they could be, as evidenced by the lack of shipping units on Amazon. Any time Amazon gets a number of them to sell, sales surge - in-between that, third-party sellers list units for about $100 more.
That said even if there were wide availability of the console the Wii would probably outsell it just because it's a lot cheaper. An interesting place to keep track is here (look at core system sales lower in the page), though as noted the figures are a little unrealistic because they are based on Amazon sales.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm skeptical about those Blu-ray stats...just like the numbers that the MPAA cited for Canadian piracy (see /. post for Michael Geist from a few days ago).
Plus PS3 has that blinking issue...maybe good for "3D" movies (ref to old vid cards that came with "special" LCD glasses).
While they are both game consoles, there is a big price differential between a Wii and a PS3. It makes sense that the Wii would sell more units. While it has a nifty controller, power wise it's on par with the PS2 which sold like gangbusters this past holiday season. Compare it to those numbers for a telling look.
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GameFly thinks it's legal. I'm guessing their legal department made sure of it, first.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I believe that the Wii, PS3, and 360 all have their respctive places in the video game industry. Wii: Great for a different experience, easy for eveyone to pick up and play, awesome for it's Virtual Console (my favorite part). PS3: Blu-ray player is a bargin, HDMI out, cheap downloadable games. 360: Decent libary, XBOX live is a great social sceen, quality controllers. BTW, I have the PS3 and Wii and love them both.
Does anyone really think that Sony would claim anything else? The article itself says that "this high percentage is likely helped by the bundled Talladega Nights Blu-ray disc with the first 500,000 units of PlayStation 3." I understand that the study itself is not from Sony, but from Nielsen VideoScan. Still, it's way too early to declare anything close to a winner, considering how many people actually own the proper displays (particularly in the US, but I bet the Super Bowl made a big impact on HDTV sales). Show me stats in another six months, as I'll bet that a lot of the PS3 owners who bought Blu-ray movies at a 2:1 rate over HD-DVD might have done just that - they bought two movies, maybe along with two PS3 games, just to try it out (as HappySqurriel says above). If all 360s came with a HD-DVD drive (and they most likely will sometime this year), maybe those people would have done the same thing, and we would (and probably will) see a different ratio. Meanwhile, stand-alone HD-DVD players are a better deal than stand-alone Blu-ray players, and it won't be long before Toshiba lowers the price on those units yet again, so perhaps the overall PS3 impact on the format war won't be a deathblow to HD-DVD (not that I own either format at this point).
My local Best Buy store has PS3s sitting on its shelf, and has had them in stock for some time now. On the other hand, there are people camping outside of the store every day now hoping that they will get Wiis in stock on that day... Some of these mornings we've had wind chill factors of -5 F or lower. I may be giving people in my area the benefit of the doubt in this, but I don't think this has to do with the console being cheaper; this behavior is not a symptom of being 'cheap' as far as I know.
.. that PS3's come with vouchers for discounts on Blu-Ray movies. A surge in sales is no suprise.
What is left to be seen is if Blu-Ray can hold onto the market of gamers just "giving HD movies a try."
Even a dead cat will bounce once on its way down.
The common perception about the VideoScan numbers is that a lot of PS3 owners used their "free Blu-ray movie" coupon, boosting 'sales' after Christmas. Especially since there doesn't seem to be anything else available worth doing on the PS3 device right now. This is in addition to a rather dry HD-DVD lineup in January. Let's remember, the first two weeks in January after Christmas doesn't necessarily set a trend.
The VideoScan numbers for the third week in January, not reported in the article, already show Blu-Ray slumping down again, compared to HD-DVD.
All this sounds vaguely similar to the narrowly-defined "Zune leads 30GB music player market in first two days of sales" reports we saw a few weeks ago. Much ado about nothing.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Ive posted some bias comments about the Nintendo Wii on Slashdot and Joystiq. Heres my chance to redeem myself. When a new technology comes out there is one thing that will help it stay and its called "Mass Appeal". The new technology has to find a way to reach the masses and be the next long lasting technological trend (such as vhs,dvd,mp3,joysticks). The Wii comes off to the general public as a family party game or something to help them exercise. Hardcore gamers are very different from the casual gamer. Casual gamers tend to not have the type of loyalty as the hardcore. When something new comes out people tend to jump on the hype train. Once that cool feeling wears off the casual gamer looks for something new to fulfill that high. The Wii will have a hard time staying on top once the casual gamer gets tired of the same old party games. It all depends on how long that hype lasts.
The "PS3" game on the other hand is the opposite. For those who could afford triple the game price, the first few levels were EXTREMELY hard. Then it got incredibly easy, but by those levels people realized the gameplay was crap and stopped playing altogether.
Take a look at the longer term trends - Blu-Ray is not catching up through any bounce, but from real and steady growth in movies and in players.
These are numbers that show Blu-Ray consistently on top, for almost a month now - and continuing to grow. Don't forget the coupon still required you to spend money, it was not a "free" movie - and anyone even using that coupon is likley to buy more titles as well since they have it rigged up to play movies.
The only people who really know how well either format are doing though I think is Netflix - that's the first place HD-DVD or Blu-Ray owners would turn, buying movies slowly as they found ones they like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some old slashdot post said it was illegal. Is there any truth to this?
That's not even remotely true. Some old Zonk (read: FUD) post referred to a patent application by Sony which could be construed to mean that they were thinking about implementing copy protection measures which would prevent re-sale and renting, but no such claim was ever made in actuality.
PS3 games can be played on any PS3, any number of times. They're even further in the "right direction" than I'd have guessed; you can download purchased games from your PSN account onto up to 5 different PS3s (presumably for re-download if you get a second or a replacement machine, but still...)
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To be honest, I'm in the same boat you are. Looking at the line-up and my particular preference for games, I really don't see much besides Zelda for me. Yeah, I'm not exactly the "new audience" that Nintendo is looking for, since I am most certainly considered a "hardcore gamer" (although it's really RPGs that are my thing, not so much shooters). I know a lot of people are raving about Rayman, Elebits, and Wii Sports, expecting everyone to share the same opinion they are. Meh. Doesn't really excite me. (Then again, I imagine games like Gears of War, World of Warcraft, Metal Gear Solid, and Final Fantasy, don't really excite many of these Wii fanboys either) Let's remember everyone, to each his own.
That said, I still want a Wii, just to try out the experience. Since the console is cheap enough, why not?
-- jchenx
Generally there's a lot of ramping up that's done prior to a launch. This means that in most cases there's a greater supply at and around the launch period than afterwards, as you've had some number of months to produce systems and related items in advance.
Additionally, most everything sells less following the holidays, as most people don't have money to buy things. Many of the purchases of the Wii are likely to be people still attempting to get little Johnny his Christmas present.
However, the true lull is in games for people who blow through them like tissue paper. They've probably got maximum scores in all five Wii Sports, could recite for you all of Midna's lines from Twilight Princess, could plot every tree on every course in Excite Bike, power their house using Elebits, and have saved and killed as many patients in Trauma Center as your nearest hospital has in its entire life.
Quite simply, until there are more games than any one human can play these people will not be satisfied.
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