US sales of Sony PlayStation 3 decline 19% in November
According to the Wall Street Journal, US sales of the PlayStation 3 in November declined 19 percent from the previous month. This decline comes at a time when Nintendo Wii sales have doubled and Xbox 360 sales have risen 8%. In Black Friday sales alone, the Xbox 360 reportedly outsold the PS3 three to one and we all know the Wii continued to dominate. No holiday rebound is projected for Sony as analysts expect December PS3 sales to continue to remain flat while sales of its competitors are expected to remain strong. Sony is also expected to miss its goal of selling 10 million consoles in the current fiscal year ending in March 2009. Despite the somber projections by analysts Sony remains optimistic, focusing on the console’s year to date sales which have risen 60% and stating that “it is working hard to close the quarter strong”. With sales sagging and competition heating up, will 2009 be the year Sony finally cuts the price on the PS3?
@crownseven
i agree with you, but if they dropped it down a hundred bucks, i definately might consider. even if i own a 360 and a wii.
and @minime- your comment is a joke not the xbox.
yes it may be the next generation, but the PRICE and minimal amount of GAMES ps3 has in its lineup is a joke compared to the 360. yes the games are good, but they are not something someone is willing to pay 400 dollars for the system only, plus more money for the games and the extra controllers. Hell no!!
drop the price, and sony might be able to make a comeback. does anyone else agree?
They should drop the price. I already own a PS3, and I like it. Both as a Blu-Ray player and as a game console.
True, the XBox 360’s game lineup beats it, but… I’m not a huge gamer and may eventually get an Xbox.
I’d rather pay $399 once and not have to worry about it dying on me a month later like the 360
The PS3 is irrelevant. The Wii is the sales champ, despite launching a full year after the 360. Though I’m not a huge Wii fan, the people are speaking loud and clear.
@trumani,
The comparison you are talking about are the direct result of a simple thing: 360 is easier to develop for so the developers cut corners (and costs) by not taking advantage of PS3. Given that the game is properly written, PS3 has better potential to run the same games faster and with better graphics. Take something well written, like GT5, and you will not find anything as nearly good looking on other platforms.
the xbox is cheaper and with the new update its pretty much perfect. did i mention xbox live?
the ps3 is way too expensive in these tough times. most consumers don’t care about blu-ray because most of them barely know what it is therefore that could never be enough to justify the price for the average consumer.
@ b.N.
sorry to burst your bubble but the only games that consumers buy for the wii are the ones nintendo make themselves. can you imagine if halo was the only game worth buying for the xbox? thats pathetic. 3rd party support for the wii is weak. the only reason the wii ispopular is because its based entirely on a gimmick, which i admittedly fell for.
i have a wii and an xbox, the wii is a complete waste of money and we barely play it anymore after wii sports lost its charm. (it had a brief revival after wii fit came out though). whenever we want a multi platform game (which is rare because most developers leave out the wii for their best games) we pick it for the xbox. the graphics are better and the game is usually better made.
I bought a 360.. Then the ps3.. Black friday bought my girlfriend a wii and wii fit. The wii is fun if you have ppl over that’s about it.. My ps3 blows my 360 out of the water on every facet.. I kept my xbox for the xbox live but now it doesn’t even stack up to the ps3 any longer so it sits there lifeless and neglected just like it was when it was being engineered.. Spend the bucks and get the ps3 it is so worth it.. I’d even recomend the wii for parties.. 360 is just worthless and played out like halo.
I like many other people have all 3 systems and I like my ps3 and wii over the 360 I just got my wii and play it more than I have the 360…and I think the reason ps3 sales are dropping is the lack of backwards compatibility all the models being sold today can’t play ps2 games and that’s a huge turn off for a lot of people
What good is all of that if there aren’t any GOOD, EXCLUSIVE games? Resistance, MGS4 and Littlebigplanet are the only 3 system exclusive/sellers I can think of.
What about Uncharted which is to date my fav game ever. Plus you have to pay to play online which adds up if you have more then 1 unit.
@CROWNSEVEN,
I never said the xbox wouldn’t, all i said is that the PS3 will. One of the major reasons i have it over the X-Box is the Blu-ray, I did not mean my commmet to disparage the xbox my friend has one and its awesome i just stated that if your looking at the ps3 strickly for gaming your missing alot.
gotta get backt to work now.
-Jess
*sigh* Most people, fanboys usually, fail to see that most people factor things like “Games” and “Online Community” when they look for the console that they want to go buy and take home with them. I am personally an Xbox 360 guy but, at the same time even I will say that the PS3 is a good machine in it’s right.The Xbox 360 just has what I like and what I need, so that’s why I use it.
strip both consoles from their peripherals (blueray, media center, ect.) and focus on the game console. PS3 is a sweet console but does not offer what i am looking for. I believe it focused more on other things other than gaming which i guess would be the next gen side. The 360 is nice and i consider its xbox live feature aa part of the gaming experience.
Overall, i look for the games and add ons for making the game experience better. So far the 360 and Wii have delivered but sooner or later the PS3 will do the same.
I have all the systems…. and I only use my ps3 to play blue-rays and honestly I don’t even really do that.. cuz the movies are too expensive..
I have the PS3 and I enjoy the online play, which is free. I am amazed no one points out that there is an additional cost to play XBox online. I think it is $20 for 3 months. Doesn’t that close the cost gap?
I love how all the PS3 supporters keep bringing up media support and blu-ray when questioned about good games. Anyways the topic of the article is about PS3 sales declining which is because of the lack luster line up.
@ librapaj
It was a joke, obviously I can use it to play my blue-ray’s…wait I have a 200 blu-ray player already..damn.
@jesterhead
I hope you don’t rely on comedy to feed yourself because if so, starvation is just around the corner. Me personally, I bought the PS3 when it originally came out and I bought it for it’s blu-ray player. I am a casual gamer, not a hardcore gamer. But gaming aside if you put both machines head to head, common sense would tell you that spec wise, the 360 falls short of what the PS3 offers. That was my point when I originally directed my comment towards you.
@ librapaj
I relay on my savings from buying a 360 and not a PS3 to feed myself so your sadly mistaken. Also your comment said to educate myself so I didn’t know in what area I should focus my studies. So what is superior hardware without a superior library of supported games. Plus the difference in graphics is so small nobody cares but you. I will enjoy my backward capabilities and superior line up of games over your extra few pixels any day.
The Xbox 360 vs. PS3 argument is tiring. People seem to always mix the bigger picture, which is that the comparisons made are never on an even playing field. For one when games are compared, as someone already pointed out, it is the same games on both consoles being looked at. They are basically ported over to the PS3 because of its late arrival and thus they either look the same or look better on the 360. That said, if you took the best looking 360 game and the best looking PS3 game and compared them you would see that the PS3’s graphics and clarity are above that of the 360’s. This is simply because the capacity of the PS3 is higher than the 360. A DVD can only hold so much, while a blu-ray disk’s capacity can hold 3 times the amount. This means the games get condensed to fit on a 360 while they can put as much graphics, sound, pixels and what-not on the blu-ray. Yes the 360 is a next-gen console but it still uses old-gen hardware in terms of the disks it uses.
The funny thing is that what happens when each manufacturer decides to release their next consoles? MS can’t stick with DVDs anymore because not only would they be outdated, but the games being made won’t fit, unless you’re planning on making about 2 or 3 disks like they used to make for CD games like FFVII. That’s the difference between the PS3’s stance and that of the 360…Sony invested in the future and even though it may be hurting them now it’ll be beneficial in the long run. The same goes for the higher capacity hard drives (which MS is doing now), the Wireless connectivity (which MS sells a peripheral for now) and the ability to install another OS. MS even knows the value of a next gen storage device like blu-ray, except they chose the ill-fated HD-DVD and it lost. In the future they’ll have to either come up with their own proprietary storage device (which would fail miserably) or adopt blu ray. They can also resort to downloadable games if they don’t want to pay their rival Sony to use their technology but that also comes at the mercy of ISPs, who wouldn’t take kindly to ridiculous bandwidth usages to download 5gbs just for a game. Then the capacity of their HDD drive would have to be at least 1terabyte also to even be able to look into such an idea.
Bottom line really is that Microsoft is milking its machine for all its worth now because early adoption of the next gen hardware/storage/multimedia hasn’t taken off yet. If the PS3’s prices went down then the battle would dramatically change. And as for those saying that people buy consoles just for the gaming, you are only partially right and that is what I have to give MS credit for. They have used their financial power to wrestle a lot of the exclusives away from Sony and thus have gained a strong sales position since everyone wants to have access to tons of games. When it comes to hardcore gamers, however, they look at more than just gaming. The online community is a big aspect of it, downloadable content, and multimedia playback (which includes being able to add your own soundtracks to games). Overseas the PS3 sells more than the 360 and blu ray is selling at a record pace so it’s only a matter of time until we see mass adoption, which would in turn change the dynamics in the gaming arena as well.
@jesterhead
Again, you are in dire need of an education because you have no reading comprehension skills. #1 if you would READ correctly you would see that I am not a hardcore gamer and the reason I bought the PS3 was for its Blu-Ray capabilities primarily. I cannot speak as to what reasons other people have for buying their machine. #2 If you were educated you would know that the original PS3 had backwards capability so I too can enjoy it if I wish. So before you make comments on a specific machine and it’s pros and cons, you might want to EDUCATE yourself on said machines features before you end up looking ignorant. One more thing, I would rather spend 600 Bucks on a machine that is well built with a bevy of features as opposed to a machine you purchase and have to return every month because of it’s crappy build quality. Oh and I don’t have to buy other crappy add-ons to get the functionality the PS3 offers me right of the box. Just in case you don’t know I’m referring to expandable memory (hard drive) and built-in blu-ray. How did that HD-DVD experiment go with Microsoft? Not to well huh?
given some of the logic infused in these discussions, sega genesis, with better graphics, should have beat out super nintendo, sega saturn with better graphics should have beat out…well it had no competition but failed anyway! haha… sega dreamcast should have beat out the n64 & playstation, xbox should have beat out the playstation 2… and xbox360/ps3 should have beat out the nintendo wii
and we’re talking..maybe 2-3 games per year that companies will actually invest in designing specifically to make use of ps3’s better potential graphics.. other than that, the games will be literally the same in graphical power. Even games like final fantasy will be made for both ps3 & xb360. Unfortunately the exclusitivity of games for consoles (other than nintendo) is going way down. Even Tekken 6 will be for both consoles! what makes the difference now is community and xbox 360 has a huge stronghold on that. Not to say ps3 can come back, but the graphics really isn’t an issue anymore.
just a side note, we’ve seen TWO Project Gotham racing games on the xbox 360 so far, and only one “beta” gran turismo 5 game for the ps3… and the game keeps being delayed…I do admire the graphics, however, but no developers are biting and going to make PS3 only games other than sony’s studios. I’m not saying xbox 360 has more exclusivity props, but just that it’s a void arguement.
@librapaj
I’d fare myself educated enough to argue with your stupid comments. Ok so what do i do if i don’t have an orginal ps3 for backwards compatibility? Go on ebay? Buy yours? Current versions of PS3 only play ps1 games so your superior education on systems should of told you that. Your argument about buying ‘add-ons’? I believe the 360 INCLUDES a hard drive in system packages now for a lot less than PS3…unless a casual gamer such as yourself would like to just watch movies on it. And by the time the PS3 hardware catches up to Xbox in the market with games and blu-ray they will already have a new system coming out.
See the reason I own a PS3 and not a 360 is (other then the reason that i dont want a bricked gaming system after 5 months) is that I own a computer, and almost all “good” 360 games come to the PC at the same time or later.
Why would I get L4D on the 360 when i could use a mouse and keyboard and get better gfx on my PC?
@jesterhead
I was referring to the blanket statement you made that PS3 did not offer backwards compatibility. That was false. And in regards to the hard drive add one, you are limited to the one you can buy for the 360 whereas the PS3 you can go on newegg and buy one fairly cheap. Casual gamer doesn’t mean I only watch movies, it means I didn’t make a purchase based on solely on games, I made it based on the total package. And as for your theory that microsoft will have an xbox 720 coming out later on. Let me ask you which format do you think they are going to be using? Do you think it’s going to be downloadable just as the commenter above so eloquently stated. Or do you think it’s going to be Blu-Ray. I can almost assure you that it will not be DVD. So where would that leave you and Microsoft? I am in no way implying it would be the end of them, but it would surely put Sony in a very interesting and profitable position mind you.
@librapaj
Lets review some basic facts “SONY DOES NOT OWN BLU-RAY”, it has a very large stake but was developed by a partnership with Phillips. Several investments are held by different companies, I would never rule it out Microsoft would never be able to adapt it to a system for a large price tag. Sony invested in a Blu-Ray technology while Microsoft focuses on games and the online download experience, in which case you did make the correct purchase because you seem more interested in movies than games. I personally don’t care if it has a movie player at all for this version or a future one I buy a system for games and not movies.