Price Cut Leads To PS3, PSP Sales Boost

Klaidas writes "The BBC reports that sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 console in the US rose by 21% in June, though the machine still trails the Wii and Xbox 360. NPD numbers show 98,500 PS3s were sold, compared to 198,400 Xbox 360s (up 28%) and 381,800 Wiis (up 13%). Sony said that the $100 price cut to the 60GB PS3 led to a 135% sales rise over the last two weeks, though independent confirmation of that jump is not yet available. 'Nintendo's DS handheld sold 561,900 units , while Sony's PSP, which has been boosted by an April price cut, sold 230,100 units, NPD reported. Software sales in the US are 31% higher than the same time last year, the market research showed, buoyed by new consoles from all three firms.'"

Comments

Re:Misleading headline

[AKAImBatman]

Um, easy? TFA (also in the summary) says,

Sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in the US rose by 21% in June. Tracking firm NPD Group reported that 98,500 PS3s were sold.

Sony said that the $100 (£50) price cut to the 60GB PS3 led to a 135% sales rise over the last two weeks.

Let's see here. We have:

1. Actual numbers of sales.
2. A computed increase in sales.
3. An analysis from the company who sells the product.

It all adds up to an increase in sales due to the PS3 price drop. Something which I completely believe.

Since the launch of the PS3, the number one sticking point with consumers has been the high price. It was irrelevant if they could afford it or not, it was simply more than they were willing to pay. The temporary $100 price drop was thus able to impress upon consumers that the PS3 is currently being sold at a "value" price, and that they had better get one before the price goes back up. (Some people are suckers for sales. :P) Therefore, Sony's analysis that correlates the sales increase with the drop in price is justified. It's difficult to *prove* in a mathematical sense, but the evidence is sufficient to accept the claim on the basis of common sense, economic theory, and market trends.

June was a 5 week period, May was a 4 week period

[ShapeGSX]

NPD counts sales on a per week basis, not monthly. But the tallies are reported monthly. With NPD, not all months are 4 weeks. If every month was 4 weeks, they would only end up counting 12 * 4 = 48 weeks in a year. There are 52 weeks in a year, so they need 4 months out of the year to be a 5 week period.

June is one of those 5 week periods.

If you take this into account, weekly PS3 sales were actually DOWN for June vs May, not up! This is the only valid way to measure sales for months that have a different number of weeks in them.

So in May, they sold 82,000/4 = 20500 PS3s per week.

In June, they sold 98,500/5 = 19,700 PS3s per week.

Sales didn't increase by 21% in June, they decreased by 4%!

Re:Misleading headline

[Wdomburg]

This is supposed to prove ... what exactly? Even if a single vendor was a meaningful metric, there's a few issues here:

• The Wii is currently ranked higher.
  
• Even though it's not unlikely the PS3 temporarily took the #1 spot, you provide no evidence that it did or for how long. Since this is updated hourly, it's unlikely that you actually know that it was consistently #1 (unless perhaps you're disturbingly obsessive).
  
• Amazon doesn't even sell the Wii directly at the moment.
  
• The marketplace sellers that do offer the Wii are doing so at a shipped price of $392.19 and higher, or $142.20 over MSRP. If anything it's absolutely pathetic that the PS3 at MSRP can't outsell the Wii at 56% markup over retail.

Re:Poor Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Gran Turismo has worked on the European PS3s for some time. Since one of the early updates. I haven't got any of the others but I suggest you check the latest compatibility list rather than the original one.

Because maybe they actually like Lumines?

[tepples]

I got one with the thought that there was no downgrader in sight for the 3.51 firmware, which would most definitely be shipped on the new model. Mine came with 3.40 Is there a way for an individual customer to get a retail store to let him check the firmware version on a PSP before buying it?

PROTIP: hay noobz you only need to use it once, no need to hog all the copies of Lumines out there! Ever considered that maybe they end up liking Lumines and don't want to try the GBA version in an emulator?

Re:June was a 5 week period, May was a 4 week peri

[ShapeGSX]

They aren't my semantics, they are NPD's semantics. Read this if you want to learn more: http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=421

Forget the whole "month" thing. The section of the year that NPD calls "June" was a 5 week tracking period for NPD. The section of the year NPD calls "May" was a 4 week tracking period for NPD. That is NPD's own method for dividing up the year into weeks.

If you sell 82,000 things in 4 weeks, but during the next 5 weeks, you sell 98,500 things, when were sales better? During the first 4 weeks? Or during the next 5 weeks?

I think I had that question on one of my 5th grade exams. If you answered that question using Sony's method, the teacher would mark it as incorrect.

Don't know if this is the right place...

[Discgolferusa]

but here goes.

What is the facination with the Wii? Why is it doing so well? Price has something to do with it obviously, but after playing the Wii several times, I can't say I was that impressed with it. The lineup is fairly light, and it isn't long before the remote loses it's cool factor and frankly, in some games, can be down right annoying.

I found the whole experience fairly boring after just a couple of hours of total use. Yet, I know people who are obsessed with the thing.

So what am I missing about the Wii phenom? Is it primarily because it is easy for little kids to pickup? Or is it some party aspect that I've not had the priviledge of partaking in that has this console being some must have device?

Of course, I've not been terribly impressed with Nintendo consoles for years. I owned a 64 and think it was the biggest waste of money I've ever had. I currently own a DS almost strictly for FF and Puzzle Quest, and if I could get them in a different medium, I probably would (Puzzle Quest on a small screen is its own little version of torture, but the game is too damn fun not to play).

(For perspective I own a DS and a 360 currently for "consoles").

Re:Don't know if this is the right place...

[poofyhairguy82]

What is the facination with the Wii? Why is it doing so well? ...what am I missing about the Wii phenom?

Full disclaimers: I have had a Wii since January and I also own a DS and a PS3, and the guy I live with has a 360 (that I get full access to). My favorite of those is by far my Nintendo DS, which is just a Chrono Trigger away from having everything (literally) which made the SNES great. In fact, I love the DS twice as much as any of the others, so I promise I am not all about graphics. I just expect graphics to be good enough they need to be for me to enjoy the game.

The Wii's success has completely to do with the remote. Now I know you knew that, but it is an important point to make. It's not a perfect remote- it often reads things wrong and lacks a fine detail of precision gamers are used to with Xbox/PS remotes.

But here is what people miss: the biggest advantage of the remote. It evens the playing field. Gamers like you and me know a Xbox/PS remote so well we can play with our eyes closed. But that has come from hours (years) of associating ourselves with the inputs, curves and expectations ("this button is usually go, this one is usually shoot").

For non-gamers (and I really just want so say "females" instead based on my experience with the device) the Wii is a much more natural/intuitive way to control things moving on a screen- through motion- than the traditional game remotes. Plus much of the advantage gamers built up on the old remotes is gone, which evens the playing field.

The Wii isn't really targeted at traditional gamers. It lacks what we care about (decent online play, having more power in a next gen console than an AppleTV, big traditional non-nintendo franchises) but has everything needed to entertain for hours a family of four.

This is where the appeal comes in, but so far numbers show that the majority of sales are by experienced gamers so far who want to get in first on the excitement. But I think that within a year all the traditional gamers will be saturated as much as they want to be with the Wii and more and more non-gamers will pick one up. Already that is happening- as the Wii will outpace the 360 in a few months in worldwide consoles sold.

Personally after coming to this realization, I bought a PS3. The Wii is not meant for me. I love my Wii when many people are over at the house and I can play with them. I have bought almost every party mini-game the console has to offer, and I have (successfully) used "do you want to come over to my house sometime and play with my Nintendo Wii" as a pick-up line. But I just can't play the Wii alone.

Call me shallow, but I just can't play "serious" games on the Wii. I have bought Zelda, Resident Evil, and Paper Mario (the three best single player games) and the closest one I have come to beating is Paper Mario. It is my favorite Wii game, and I think I like it because it uses the remote in a traditional sense (little "waving") and because its graphics really took advantage of the console. On the other hand Zelda was simply too dark and murky for my liking - the graphics quality was not where I needed it to be to enjoy what they were trying to do with the game (I will play it in a few years on a Gamecube emulator that is upconverting the picture). Plus both it and Resident Evil (the best looking Wii game) suffer from too much waving. It is hard to play a game five hours straight with such repetitive motion, and the "extra" movements and misses from the Wiimote can kill you in pressure situations. It is obvious that the Wii was not meant for such games, and I bet it only gets a few decent ones in its lifetime (probably most of the ones worth playing by Nintendo).

So as I said, I have a PS3 and I love it. It upconverts PS2 games to look better than most Wii games, its controller is an old friend made wireless, I have it dual booting Ubuntu to play downloaded media, and I upconverts DVDs better than my very expensive DVD player does. Oh, and $20 dow

Re:Don't know if this is the right place...

[Hadlock]

Why is it doing so well? Because the Wii is Video Games You Can Play With Your Girlfriend(tm)(slashdotters not included)
 
Imagine you're married, or engaged, right out of college. You want to play video games like The Good Ole' Days, but the wife is bitching about you blowing $700 (half the mortgage payment) on a PS3. Not only is a Wii cheaper, but she gets some benefit out of it too. Which do you buy? The constant nagging every time you play, or a happy housemate?