poor sony. they've just lost their console mojo.
Posted by
x (aka dmuck)
Dec 22 '08, 06:25
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According to the NPD Group's data, 2.04 million Nintendo Wii consoles were sold during the four-week tracking period ending 29 November 2008. No platform in history has ever sold as many systems in November as the Wii did this year.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 enjoyed robust sales of 836,000 systems, a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, has said that the system's average sale price (ASP) during November was $270. That marks a slight decrease from September and October, and indicates that the $200 Xbox 360 Arcade model is attracting more consumers.
Sony sold 378,000 PlayStation 3 systems during the month, a disappointing decrease from last year's total of 466,000 systems. Sony currently offers the highest-priced console (from $400 to $500, depending on the specifications) -- and is consequently selling fewer systems.
It is standard to compare average weekly sales rates to account for the different number of weeks in the monthly tracking periods.
Console unit sales often more than double from October to November, and in fact Xbox 360 sales were up 120 percent from the previous month and Wii sales were up 154 percent. The PlayStation 3 just missed doubling its October sales, with a growth of just 98 percent month-on-month.
The only other system not to double its October sales in November was the PlayStation 2, which saw an increase of only 51 percent. Nintendo DS sales jumped 220 percent from the prior month and PlayStation Portable (PSP) sales were up 118 percent.
When the Wii launched in November 2006 it was 3 million systems behind the Xbox 360. Today, two years later, the roles are reversed and it is the Wii ahead of the Xbox 360 by the same margin.
Simultaneously, the PlayStation 3 has struggled to make up ground against the Xbox 360. During 2007 the Xbox 360 consistently outsold Sony's newest console, but then for a few months in early 2008 the PlayStation 3 made modest gains. The September 2008 Xbox 360 price cuts have since eliminated those gains.
This story is difficult to perceive in traditional installed base graphs because holiday sales spikes distort the figures. Here is the race as we have often pictured it.
The following graphs, however, provide a much more informative reading of history. The first figure below covers the period from November 2006 to November 2007.
The above graph shows the installed bases of the PlayStation 3 and Wii, relative to the Xbox 360's installed base, starting in November 2006. Each started around 3 million systems behind the Xbox 360, represented as a vertical displacement of -3 million on each curve.
Starting with November 2006, the PS3 lost ground to the Xbox 360 at a nearly constant rate through much of its first year, with a slowing during July 2007 when Sony first adjusted the prices of the PlayStation hardware. Microsoft's own August 2007 price cuts and strong software lineup then pushed the PS3 further behind through November.
At the same time, the Wii was catching up to the Xbox 360, slowed only momentarily when Halo 3 launched.
The next graph, covering the period from November 2007 to November 2008, tells a much different story.
Sony's November 2007 price drop was very effective. Instead of losing ground to the Xbox 360, it actually made some modest gains through July 2008, with a bump from the June sales which accompanied the release of Metal Gear Solid 4.
When Microsoft cut prices again, this time in August 2008, Sony began to lose ground and has ended its second year about twice as far behind the Xbox 360 as it was when it launched in November 2006.
By comparison, Nintendo was still hampered by hardware shortages during Holiday 2007 but then caught up to � and surpassed � the Xbox 360 by mid-2008. This is clearly shown in the graph as the Wii curve passes through zero and up toward a positive 3 million.
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