EA Says 'Next-Gen' Is 'Now-Gen'

Via GamesRadar, a Reuters report noting that the 'next generation' consoles are now more-or-less broken in. Sales for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii have transitioned to the point where software sales are going to be well worth the effort for development houses. "'[Black] Friday marked one of those points where you can say something's changed," [EA CEO Riccitiello] said. 'Around the world, based on the data I've got, it was pretty clear that the transition is now over. Key to that was Sony Corp's recent price cut for its PlayStation 3, which should ensure the struggling console hits the company's fiscal-year sales target of 11 million units.'"

Comments

EA is crazy, Sony won't hit that target

[rbarreira]

Bear with me for a little while here.

Sony's target is to ship 11 million PS3s during this fiscal year (April 2007 - March 2008). In the first half of the year (April - September) they shipped 2 million PS3s. Even with increased holiday sales, 9 million in the remaining 6 months is absolutely crazy - it's actually similar to Wii sales.

Let's look at it another way:

In the previous fiscal year, Sony shipped 3.6 million PS3s. 11 + 3.6 = 14.6. 14.6 million PS3s shipped by the 31st of March 2008, which means around 14 million sold to consumers. According to vgchartz (which may be a little off but for the purposes of this discussion is more than accurate enough), the PS3 is at 6.36 million sold (to consumers) as of the 25th of November. 14 - 6.36 = 7.64 PS3s that they need to sell in 4 months... That's 1.91 million PS3s per month, which is more than current Wii levels of production (1.8 million according to Nintendo themselves).

EA is delusional, and Sony won't hit their target. In fact, they'll probably reduce their forecast in the next quarterly report (out in January). Otherwise, massive egg will be on their faces when they do their fiscal year report in April.

Hold on

[Sockatume]

So the last gen was the next gen, the generation before that was the superconsoles, and the next gen was going to be the HD era, but now the last gen is the old gen, the next gen is this gen, and the superconsoles are retro? Where does that put retro?

Re:Really?

[Orange Crush]

I mean, two years to decide that developing for the 360 is a good idea?

Around 120 million PS2s have been shipped to date. That's ~80 million more PS2s than all three next gen consoles combined. Granted many will have broken/been discarded/packed away/etc, but that still leaves a helluvalot of working PS2s out there. EA's mission is to sell games and customers don't typically buy games for systems they don't have.

What they're saying is that the new consoles finally have reached a total installed base large enough for EA to be comfortable devoting more resources to those platforms and moving away from the PS2.

Re:Yeah, keep trying Sony

[Roskolnikov]

ok, playing fanboy for a second, you list the cheapest wii available at 565 to make the 360's price look good.

Why not also mention that the 360 has the best warranty? Why not mention why (hint, red rings for the holidays)?

If not for Nintendo's amazing understanding of their audience the WII would not be able to compete, graphically, computationally its inferior, but that doesn't matter, its fun.

The XBOX360 would be a great system if not for the continual doubt as to the longevity of the hardware and the perpetual noise, also, Microsoft should be including a HDDVD-Rom capable drive in the mid and high end versions, it would be cheaper than that damned external $200 dollar optional 'player' and it would turn the box into the media center that Microsoft so desperately desires.

Sony should drop their bottom pricepoint to $300 but really, looking at the hardware specs and cost I don't see how.

and yeah, I own a PS3; when I find a WII in stock I suspect I will own one of those as well, the only thing on the 360 that I find attractive is the Halo franchise but it isn't enough to make me drop coin.