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August NPD Numbers Look Good For Wii, 360
To add a little more context to yesterday's announcement that the Wii had outsold the 360 worldwide, we have August's NPD numbers courtesy of 1up. From the article: "The story hasn't changed much -- Wii remains on top, PlayStation 3 continues to have trouble gaining steam and Xbox 360 maintains a position behind Wii but gaining momentum as the fall season moves into gear-- but the numbers have shifted. Encouraging news for Microsoft, however, as Xbox 360 moves nearly 100,000 more units compared to last month's 170,000, while Madden NFL 08 pushes 896,600 boxes and BioShock moves 490,900 copies -- impressive numbers for the Xbox 360 platform, software-wise. Nintendo must be happy with the performance of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, as the latest sci-fi Samus Aran shooter managed 218,100 copies in late August, with Wii Play (released in January) only beating it by nearly 50,000 units."
Latest /. discussion has been focused entirely on hardware numbers. Lately it has been Wii > 360 > PS3.
One thing is for sure, in terms of software, the 360 is top dog. This system flat out moves games. With Halo3 coming out in a little over a week, expect the 360 to have record quarterly numbers.
So you lump all sony products together to get
202 + 130.6 + 151.2 = 483.8
And you claim that makes it outsell nintendo and the xbox? Ok by that logic it's correct that it outsells xbox but if you're going to compare it to nintendo it's a little bit of a double standard if you take all three systems and compare it against only the wii OR it DS... by your line of reasoning shouldn't we combine all nintendo platforms and get 403.6 + 383.3 = 786.9k so you should be saying
"the nintendo family is outsellin the sony family and the xbox gg xbots and ps3tards"
If you want to troll at least try not to look so obvious (and just for the record the only console i currently own is a PS3)
Although I am sure that Sony will find some way to spin this in a good manner, I can't imagine they will be too happy that sales have actually decreased from July. With the expectation that the 60 GB version with true backwards compatibility would only be around for a short time, I am certainly surprised there wasn't a longer spike in sales. There might be some increase in sales due to high profile games like Lair and Heavenly Sword In September, but all signs point to these being disappointing and may do nothing to drive sales.
I am not shocked to see Xbox 360 sales increase. Bioshock is an amazing game, and as the de-facto console of hardcore gamers, the Xbox 360 version of Madden certainly helped sales. With Halo 3 only days away, I would expect the Xbox 360 will finish off the year with units flying off the shelf (and I would expect that sales will rival the Wii for the rest of the year).
The Wii continues to have strong sales, hampered by a continuing lack of supply. Nintendo will be happy with the sales of Metroid, and I imagine this game will continue to be a top seller for the next year or two. I'm betting Nintendo has started to hoard some units for the upcoming Christmas rush, so probably the rate of sales will be steady until November.
Probably because it's twice as powerful and offers features that the 360 especially, touts as "add-ons" (If you add up the add-ons the price becomes comparable).
The potential to find new and creative ways to abuse customers.
You blame the hardware company instead of the software company that used a feature badly, bravo on your ability to shift blame.
The potential to lock buyers into Yet Another Stupid Sony Format.
How so? It only locks developers into this format for PS3 games, which happens to offer the same major features as HD-DVD, oh and it gives twice the storage space. Whose fault is it that some idiots don't take advantage of it? 360 doesn't even have the HD-DVD built in, it's an "add-on".
I agree that the PS3 is not being developed correctly on the software front, thats impossible to argue against at this point. But as a piece of hardware it's a solid machine that doesn't have a habit of dying on you, like some other console I know.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
This Christmas is going to be interesting as far as sales numbers go. While we dealt with the two new systems last Christmas, things have radically changed in only a year. The Wii still sells out quickly, though stores are able to keep it in stock now, but will that last into the holiday season? Added to this is that two AAA titles, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, are coming out before Christmas.
DDR: Hottest Party (Or was it Hottest Dance?) comes out in a few weeks on the Wii, too, and will likely be scooped up in droves by the "casual" gamers as it is yet another way to play games without sitting on the couch.
Then the 360 and PS3 have both had hardware changes and price drops, so the general public will be more receptive. And now that there is a larger selection of high-def movies available, both will be interesting to HD buffs (probably more the PS3 than 360 due to integration).
Oh yeah, and how could I forget Guitar Hero III? All three systems. It will be interesting to see which system gets the highest sales for this.
And the DS will still outsell everything. It prints money, after all. (And the DS is getting a Guitar Hero, too)
Except PS3 back-compat has gone straight to hell with the new 80GB PS3's that use emulation instead of embedded PS2 hardware...
IT went from 99% to 80%. hardly going to hell. 360's still at 30%-40%.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
360 doesn't even have the HD-DVD built in, it's an "add-on".
This, to me, is even a bigger issue than the difference in processing power. The 360 has a slightly better GPU, which helps, but the PS3 has much more raw available power. (Emphasis on "raw.")
Really, the big deal *is* the BluRay, and not for movies. The fact that Sony included both a hard drive and a BluRay player means the game developer can assume certain things-- a fast hard-drive cache and 50GB of data storage topping the list.
I believe Microsoft was foolish to skip the HD storage medium for their HD-capable game machine. Games are getting *way* above 8GB these days.
The 360 fanbois are counting Sony out on this one. I don't think they realize Sony has the edge here as games grow to take advantage of the new system capabilities. What you see on the 360 today is about what you'll see on the 360 in four years. The PS3 is still in the Rayman stages.
But, to each his own. I'm very pleased with my PS3. Others will be pleased with their 360s. And we all win.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
For every Xbox 360 sold at retail, Microsoft ships at least 5 to 10 replacement units.
Twilight princess and God of War don't really have that much to do with each other. If you want more combat than Zelda, then it's not an issue of quality, but an issue of what you want out of a game. You might as well say that neither of the two games has enough zombies, so Resident Evil is better.
There are very few games that try to do something similar to Zelda: I only remember two off the top of my head, the Dark Cloud series and Okami. I'd put dark cloud well under TP, and Okami rather even quality wise.