Much internet content is dominated by the US media and so much of the world’s opinion, appears at least, to be a US centric view of the world. How many of us in the games world can tell what the respective shipments of the Sony PlayStation 3 is versus the Microsoft Xbox 360 globally?
Well Sony has shipped just 24 million PS3 as of the middle of this year compared to around 30 million Xbox 360s shipped since its launch in November 2005. Given that Microsoft had a 10 million device lead before Sony shipped a single box, that means that Sony is already out- shipping Microsoft and has been for some time. The Nintendo Wii has shipped around 53 million in the same time and is in a league of its own, but there is a strong feeling that if the Wii didn’t exist that the Xbox and the PS3 would still be battling out the same space, with the same numbers, between them. They simply seem to address different markets.
But with around 10 million of those PS3s going in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and with Sony dominating Japan and neighbors like Korea, a US centric view of the Universe would bound to have it that the Xbox 360 is doing better than the PS3 because of what was happening in US shipments. Or it was.
This week NPD, a research company that counts game sales said the Sony’s PS3 had led the market in the US for the first time in September. Now we know from previous NPD figures that in isolated individual months Sony has outstripped the Xbox, but it has never outsold the Wii. Well it has now, with PlayStation 3 shipping 491,800 units, the Wii selling 462,800 and the Xbox down at 352,600.
“Compared to last September, the PS3 was the big winner, more than doubling last year’s sales,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. So what’s caused this? Back in August Sony announced for September shipment a new, sleeker, cheaper PS3 would become available, for $299, and the Xbox has been unable to match the price cut and the sleeker appearance.
NPD says that overall in the US sales were $1.28 billion in September and that despite Sony’s success game hardware sales fell 6% from a year ago, to make up only $472 million of this number ‘ the rest is in games.
Some research in the past has focused not on who is shipping the most, but on the installed base, quite rightly emphasizing that games can be sold onto any existing devices, and that the rate of console shipment is not the issue. Sony will not overtake Microsoft until sometime in late 2011 that research says.
But others predicted this was coming last year, long before the PS3 Slim was announced, for instance the Daiwa Institute (not an American voice) said that Xbox 360 shipments would fall 40% in 2009 after peaking during in the previous 12-months. It also said that shipments of Sony’s PS3 would jump 47% to 14 million units. Now that the PS3 Slim is out those forecasts seem conservative and remember that if we take into account the changes in the US, the home of the beloved Xbox 360, it’s happening in spades elsewhere.
NPD said that game sales were up 5% in September from a year ago, to $649.3 million and that perversely September’s top-selling game was Microsoft’s Halo 3: ODST which sold 1,520,000 units with the Madden NFL 10, and The Beatles: Rock Band, and Guitar Hero 5, bringing up the rear. The gaming industry has been in a slump in the US as consumers spend carefully in the recession, but that now, at least, appears to be over.