80 Gig PS3 For South Korea, Slow April for Sony

The South Koreans are about to see the PlayStation 3 launched in their nation, and they're getting a treat the rest of the world will have to wait on: a PS3 with an 80 gig hard drive. Meanwhile, NPD numbers show that the company's games division suffered greatly during April, likely as a result of few titles released during that month. "Though the company saw a bump in PSP sales, Nintendo DS continues to curb stomp the portable PlayStation. More disappointing, however, must have been seeing PlayStation 3 decline in sales of almost 50,000 units between March and April ... If April was tough, May looks bleaker. Karraker wouldn't speculate on sales, but outside of MLB 07: The Show's release at the end of April, there are no first-party releases coming to PS3 in May. In fact, there are only two May PS3 games period: Surf's Up and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Both are multi-platform releases."

Comments

Console News

[MankyD]

What I've found interesting is that I've been reading a lot of news about upcoming PS3 releases recently, (not necessarily releases coming this month of course.) Conversely, it seems that news about the Wii have been tapering off - certainly from what the volume when it was first released. xbox360 news seems to have been holding steady.

This is, of course, an entirely subjective observation. Anyone care to corroborate or counter what I've noticed?

Price + Lack of games

[wframe9109]

Sony wouldn't have such a huge problem if they could back the vicious cycle they are within.

1.) Console too expensive to justify buying given lack of games.
2.) Less consumers adopt PS3.
3.) Developers see gamers going to other platform, eliminate exclusives.
4.) Repeat (1), removing PS3 exclusives gone multi-platform from equation.

Wii By a landslide, 360 with a strong following, PS3 in a small niche. All will have some great games, but Sony will get some much deserved humiliation.

Re:Price + Lack of games

[brkello]

I think the Wii will probably slow down. The problem with the Wii isn't actually with the Wii. It is with the third party developers that are now targeting it. They are going to make games that are worthless compared to what Nintendo puts out. This will make people buy less third party Wii games (and indeed, since more Wii owners are casual, they will buy less games per console). Third party developers will run back to Sony since they don't have to compete with Nintendo and the people who own a PS3 are going to buy more games per console.

Also, the Wii will probably have to have a shorted lifecycle than the PS3. It just doesn't have the power for AI or graphics. While those elements don't have anything to do with fun...a lot of developers do want to have more capability and the Wii is going to be limited to more casual games. This isn't a criticism of the Wii...I am glad Nintendo viewed next gen as how you control the game and that MS and Sony viewed next gen as power and HD. I just think the Wii is going to lose steam as soon as third party vendors realize they won't sell as many games on the Wii and that they are limited by the older hardware. And this isn't really speculation...this has happened on every Nintendo console (i.e. Third parties peform poorly compared to first party games in sales more than on other platforms)

As a side note, I find it interesting how many people love the Wii on here compared to the gamers I know in real life. A lot of them don't like the Wii because they feel the controller isn't responsive enough. Most don't want one and are happy with just their 360. The PS3 has nothing worth buying it for so they just mainly 360 and PC game. Maybe my friends are in the minority or maybe posts that don't claim Wii as the second coming of christ just don't get modded up!

Competition.

[MaWeiTao]

I'd like to see the PS3 succeed for one reason: competition. I don't mean that it necessarily has to dominate the market like the PS2 did, but it needs to sell well enough that it's considered a viable platform and regarded as an actual competitor.

We have the Xbox360, but I don't really consider it a true competitor to the Wii because those two systems aren't really seen as inhabiting the same market space. The primary problem is how poorly it's done in Japan. The fact that the system is virtually nonexistent in one of the biggest gaming markets in the world means it's always going to lose out when it comes to variety of games. Clearly, the Xbox360 has fared far better than the original Xbox, but I still see it as potentially ending up in the same situation as the Sega Genesis relative to the SNES.

The Xbox360 certainly is significant and it may turn out to be more of a challenge to Nintendo than we realize now, but it's going to require more than Halo 3 and other such games to accomplish that. But, like I've said, they've likely already lost the Japanese market. The saving grace is that Japanese companies keep developing games for the system.

The PS3 has the potential to be a competitor for both consoles because of the potential for such a variety of games, at least if it sees anything like the sort of development the PS2 has. The PS2 really had games of all types and some were truly innovative. Really the only thing it lacked was anything from Nintendo.

My point here is that if Nintendo returns to the sort of dominance it had in the past it will also revert to the same sort of tactics it used back then, back when they were the heavy-handed monopoly. If it weren't for Nintendo falling behind in the last two generations of consoles we probably wouldn't have seen the DS or the Wii.