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

Misleading headline

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Since the price cut occurred two weeks ago (for the PS3), these numbers don't reflect any bump from said price cut. The numbers that we'll be looking for are July, August, and September to see if the price cut leads to a sustained increase in sales.

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%!