Sony Officially Dropping 20GB PS3 in North America

An anonymous reader writes "Sony has just announced they're officially ditching the 20GB model of the PS3. 'Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America. In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model.'"

Comments

Outselling the 360 for the past few weeks...

[SuperKendall]

if they're dropping it due to poor demand, they should drop the 60GB model too:P

Wouldn't that mean asking Microsoft to drop the 360 as well? The PS3 has been outselling the 360 every day since Amazon finally had them in stock a few weeks ago (scroll down to "Sales rank of the primary Systems").

And yes, the Wii is still trouncing them both.

Look again

[SuperKendall]

Good lord, you should apply for marketing at Sony or something. On that page, every other statistic shows that either the Wii or the 360 is selling far better than the PS3.

No, other entries say things like "There are more items for sale for the 360" Well, yes - that's pretty obvious - it's been out longer. And as the 360 has been out longer with more games the games they do have are also outselling most PS3 games. That seems pretty obvious as well. What is not obvious, and what is interesting, is that the PS3 every time it was availaible at Amazon, has outsold the 360. It just happens that that has only held true (Amazon havng stock) for any length of time starting around the end of March.

And even in your particular example, it's only based off the last 2 weeks of data, and in only one store (Amazon), and the difference between the "sales rank" is small (360 is 20, and the PS3 is 16). It's not that clear what "sales rank" even means.

You need to understand "the rest of the story". See all those times the graph is low? On every one of those days, the PS3 was not in stock and sales were from third parties charging $100 more for the console. That's every day since the start of the year.

As for what "sales rank" means, you cannot of course derive absolute numbers from sales rank. But what you can say is hat something with a sales rank of x+1 sold more units than something else with a sales rank of x. It might be only one more unit, or it might be 10k. But it is more. And ever since Amazon has had the PS3 in stock, it has outsold the 360.

The February NPD numbers show a much different story. Granted, the NPD values aren't complete either, but much more so than merely combing just Amazon. In any case, the March NPD numbers will be along shortly, so we'll see if your theory holds up.

The Feburary NPD numbers agree with the graph. The March NPD numbers will also agree with the graph, and should show the 360 with a lead (note the rise in the graph only started around the 23rd or so of March). It's the April numbers that will be interesting and will or will not bear out the point I am making.

Of course when the Elite comes out, that will probably push the 360 in front of the PS3 for a while again I imagine.

Let me be clear, I am making no judgements against or for any console with these numbers (I own none of them). I am just saying what the charts and obvservation of all three since the start of the year has shown.