Slashdot Mirror
PS3 "Strong Contender" To Overtake Xbox 360
donniebaseball23 writes "Xbox 360 has been having an incredible year so far in 2011, but on a global scale Sony's PS3 is still gaining ground. In fact, this year PS3 has outpaced Xbox 360 by 10% worldwide, analysts have pointed out. While the Wii has clearly won the race for this console generation, the battle for second place is neck and neck, and PS3 has a good shot of overtaking Xbox 360. 'As for second place, as far as the hardcore market is concerned, I'd say PS3 is a strong contender for that position,' commented M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon."
Cool story, bro. I'm sure with 50+ million in sales they are truly hurting because one person will never buy a PS3.
We're SIX years into the 360, and FIVE for the PS3. Do we really need to constantly be analyzing which is selling more every quarter as though there's going to be a loser?
Both companies have proven very successful, and have buyers of overlapping interest. Why should anyone care which one sold more in random month half a decade into the production cycle? Really, why does it matter?
Both companies have survived this cycle. That's obvious. They'll both be throwing their hats into the next generation, which is a clear indicator that there are no losers between them. The only point I see is getting the fanboys all riled up.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
In terms of hours played of games, or money made on games, or games sold separate from the console the Wii isn't winning. At all.
A game console is the base of a broader platform. For sony that included other media, but selling consoles is done so you can sell *software*, and, if you're into that sort of thing, software people actually want to play. The Wii has had a handful of good titles. The PS3 and 360 have had a handful of good titles every year they've been out.
In terms of which console is the better to have. At this point the PS3 seems to be getting better exclusives (god of war, uncharted infamous etc.) but I'm sure Halo 4 will have something to say about that soon enough.
That's one incredibly expensive blu-ray player.
The PS3 is still $299 - the launch price of the PS2.
The PS2 went on to sell 110+ million consoles when it had its price drop from $299 to $199.
The PS3 is going to end up first in worldwide sales this gen.
Sounds to me like someone at Sony is trying to make us forget how they screwed all their customers, with their lies about hackers getting customer data records. How could they possibly be gaining ground, unless maybe they are counting all the people they gave free months to that won't renew when it comes time to hand over their credit card number.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
still buying Sony shit? Especially on Slashdot?
Haven't they learned anything about how Sony treats its customers?
It was Samsung that released the first blu-ray player to market in 2006...and it cost almost a thousand dollars. Even the Deluxe PS3 model released in October of that year was cheap compared to that. And also the PS3 can do BonusView, BD-Live and 3D blu-ray titles, and that Samsung model could not be updated to do so.
And even now and 299 the PS3 is still a pretty good deal. Massive storage, media features, a build in web browser, and games. It competes fairly well with things like Iomega's Boxee thing.
After owning all 3 at some point during this generation I've decided its my last console generation....I never thought I could be lured back to PC gaming after a long absence but the wii is just too casual, paying to play online with live is ridiculous considering how little I play multiplayer and Sony's issues up through their dismissal of their network security have made me think that I can really just do without consoles.
The PSN incident didn't affect PS3's sales. If anything, during the month or so when the PSN was down PS3 sales increased slightly.
Mada mada dane.
The PS3 is going to an eleven year life at least. The PS2 is at eleven years right now and still selling well and somewhere in the 155+ million range in worldwide sales.
When the PS2 dropped to $199 from $299 its sales reached into the 20-25 million a year range. The PS3 is just about to hit the same sweet spot where the PS2 exploded in sales.
Sony has a massive 21 first party studio lineup that is cranking out a flood of PS3 exclusives that dwarf the combined exclusive output of Nintendo and Microsoft combined. There are still major first party franchises that have yet to be released on the PS3.
The PS3 is easily going to end up in the 120, 130 million worldwide installed base range by the end of the PS3's life.
I mostly use the PS3 Slim because the Xbox cooling fan is too damned loud. The PS3 has always run whisper quiet. Both are clean and free of dust.
Unit sales matter when things are starting out. Don't sell enough units, and you can find yourself out of the running since then nobody wants to make any games for you (and if you don't have games, nobody buys it, and so on). However at this point, everyone has sold plenty. Unit sales aren't a big thing. Right now attach rate is what matters, meaning how many games per unit you sell. That's where the big money is in consoles, the licensing on games. So it doesn't matter if you sell slightly more units than your competitor, it matters if you sell (on average) more games per unit.
Try going backwards. An SNES or PSX will be a much better use of your time and money than a next gen console. Todays games aren't any more fun than the older ones, and the older ones have been around long enough so that it's known which ones are good. They're usually cheaper too, with a few exceptions.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is like saying you won't read one of the best books of the year because you hate the weird serif they use on the letter "f". We'd all be much better off if game designers focused more on fun and playability than on graphics. That's why many people still go back to the classics---graphics don't matter to most of us, fun does. I get that movies like Transformer 3 make a crapton of money on the strength of fancy special effects, but such movies, from writing to acting to editing to anything outside of effects, are utter crap. So enjoy paying for graphics, I'll pay for fun.
This is written by a market research analyst. He just wants you to buy more Sony stock so that his shares in Sony are worth more.
And WHY? Your PS3 does not play BluRays any better than my $139.00 LG player... In fact I have netflix, HULU+, blockbuster streaming and can download "apps" for it.
Only a fool would buy a PS3 just as a bluray player, Game system? yes. BluRay player? That's just nuts.
Oh and high end installs Dont use a PS3, they use a LG or Sony BD player... because they integrate to real control systems like Crestron and AMX. Every time I have tried integrating a PS3, the garbage BLuetooth to IR gateways are unreliable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And then there's customers who threw their console out the window in anger at PSN being offline, then realized they couldn't quit the console and bought a new one.
But how well does a PS3 compete with a home theater PC? Unlike PC, PS3 since 3.21 has no official open development, nor does it even have anything like Xbox Live Indie Games.
Well, more like over 30 people. Counting Family and Friends who also would never buy a PS3 and have an X-box, or an X-box and a WII.
come to think of it, I only know one person who has a PS3, and they don't use it for gaming. That use it occasionally to watch a blu-ray disc.
So, coming from my Perspective, the only thing that doesn't make a PS-3 dead last, is that some folks were dumb enough to purchase one to watch Blu-ray discs.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Yes, but I've played the hell out of my "free" copy of Infamous, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I'll be picking up Infamous 2 at the used game store whenever it comes down in price a bit.
I also got a couple of legit games for my PSP, even though it currently doesn't know how to log into PSN, and is quite thoroughly hacked (so I don't really care). :)
I didn't care much that PSN was down. I got my PS3 copy of Portal 2 activated on Steam just a few hours prior, and the "free" PC version worked fine. And Netflix still worked during the outage, using some mechanism which I am surprised that nobody bothered to analyze.
*shrug*
Kid-proof tablet..
I don't know of anyone who comes home after a long day, sits down on the couch, and plays Angry Birds for an hour to unwind. Mobile games tend to be played in short bursts when you're bored. On the bus, at the airport, etc... But games with deeper gameplay, better graphics, better controls, better multiplayer, and a more comfortable posture to play will always be preferred for leisure time.
And as for money.... yes, people will spend the extra $300 on a console. The sort of people who play console games already spend hundreds of dollars a year on the games themselves. The $200 they spend on a phone will no more eat into that budget than the money they spend on food or shelter. All are seen as "essentials" to them.
Maybe someday phones will get so powerful that you just plug them into docking stations and they become your PC or console. But until then, they're not going to replace anything.
Your nostalgia glasses fail you. It was $500 for the 20gb model without an HDMI port, with $600 for the 60gb with. And once you add in tax, a game (c'mon, who buys a $600 blu-ray player and doesn't buy at least a couple games... The PS3 does have games, just not a lot of good exclusive ones) and an HDMI cable, you were looking at a $700 to $800 investment in that PS3.
Because when I was a kid with nothing to do and no schedule to do it on I could play games with no save or with miles-apart save points, but today I need something I can save state on because there's no save function, and sometimes not even a pause function.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh and high end installs Dont use a PS3, they use a LG or Sony BD player... because they integrate to real control systems like Crestron and AMX. Every time I have tried integrating a PS3, the garbage BLuetooth to IR gateways are unreliable.
The Logitech version for use with the Harmony remote line works perfectly. I have had zero issues with it in over a year of use. On/off even works (which it does not for most others).
The real platform for cutting edge games is Facebook - it's ubiquitous, the games are designed to be viral and addictive (and in some cases, actually fun, though that doesn't seem to be a requirement), they mostly run on PCs but increasingly also work on mobile phones, and either they're freemium or cheap.
Your friend Bob's Zombie has just become Godfather!
Roger has just sent you a Shrubbery!
No, I'm not the target market, but it seems to be pervasive and growing, assuming that either Google+ doesn't kill Facebook and/or the games migrate to Google+.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks