back to article Sony claims more than a million PAL PS3s purchased

Sony has sold more than a million PlayStation 3 consoles in Europe, Australia and other territories that use the PAL TV standard, the head of the company's European entertainment operation, David Reeves, has claimed. Sony PlayStation 3 - front Sony's PS3: more than a million PAL consoles purchased In an interview with …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Ian

    600,000 units of Resistance?

    Not particularly impressive at all. Gears of War reached 2million copies in 6 weeks.

    The irony is, the reason Gears sales dwarf Resistance sales is the same reason Sony is able to make it sound like the PS3 is doing well when it's really not - availability. There were enough 360 users around to shift this many copies of Gears compared to not near as many PS3s out there to shift copies of Resistance.

    The reason the PS3 has sold so quick is because there were more than enough, perhaps too many units available meaning everyone that wanted one could get one, Sony's sales figures however are dwarfed by the Wii's sales figures despite the Wii not being able to claim as many sales in the same time period - this is because whilst more people wanted a Wii, getting hold of one was the problem. If Nintendo had 5 million Wii's available in launch week I'd place a good bet they'd have sold 5 million Wii's and blitzed this figure Sony is abusing to suggest it's doing well, the real test is what happens over a longer period of time - as has been seen in the US, impressive initial sales of the PS3 prove nothing if no one actually wants one after the initial rush is over.

    There's also the question of abusing the time period used Sony keeps claiming they have the fastest selling console of all time with the PS3 claiming they sold 200,000 in 2 weeks or whatever as they did previously, but they only use the 2 week figure because it suited them - the PS3 launch was a disaster, relatively few people queued for their PS3, if we used a time measurement of say the first 24hrs of release then both the Wii and 360 once again absolutely blitzed PS3 sales. It's like the age old saying, statistics can be used to prove anything - you just have to use favourable units of measurement.

    Sony sold 1 million PAL consoles in this time because they had 2 million consoles to sell, the real question is whether they can shift more over the coming months - if the console was as popular as they claim I'd question why they haven't shifted all 2 million units they've had available in this time period and why there is 1 million more just waiting to be purchased when the Wii is still selling out as soon as is stocked! If Sony has sold 1 million PS3s, what does it really matter if those 1 million were the only ones that actually really wanted the console?

    Sony needs action if they really want the PS3 to be a success trying to place a spin on their failures only serves to annoy users like me because it sounds as if they think we're really that stupid as to believe their spin. Sony needs to drop the price of the PS3 heavily (something I'm not sure is possible with their operating losses) and also needs a much bigger library of exclusives before I'll be buying one. Call me back when it's priced under the more affordable £300 mark.

  2. Brian Wright

    Interesting stats

    So they have sold 3 mil PS3s but only 2 mil games meaning that over 1 million (quite a few will have bought more than one game) PS3 owners do not own any games. This isn't very good for Sony seeing as they are making a loss on the console and are expected to make their money on selling games.

  3. Jon

    Selling faster than previous 2 gens

    Ian. I notice the one stat you have avoided is the most relevant one. The PS3 is selling faster than the PS1 and PS2 did at the same time after launch.

    Brian they have sold 2 million 1st party games. You have forgotten about the 3rd party games which Sony also make money from.

    At the end of the day this expensive console with few games is selling faster than its previous two generations which bodes very well for the future when the price drops and the big games get released.

  4. Ian

    Misunderstanding the stats

    Jon, you're falling for the exact same statistics trap I've already pointed out in mentioning Sony's predecessors and this is exactly the foolishness Sony is hoping for in spinning such stats! The first issue with your argument is the one I've already mentioned but that you didn't apply to this particular stat, the PS1 and PS2 had supply shortages much like the Wii and 360, whilst the PS3 had this problem for it's North America release it didn't have it for it's European (PAL) consoles and this is the console model they're talking about. Notice how there's no mention of the NTSC version of the console? That's because it was supply constrained like it's predecessors and like the competition. The fact is the PAL PS3 is probably the first ever console that's not had it's release sales restricted by supply due to Sony delaying the Euro release by 5 months and this is likely exactly why they did it so that they could easier milk the stats to make it appear to be not quite the utter failure it actually is overall so far.

    The second point to note of course is that if a console didn't outsell it's predecessors it'd have to be doing extremely bad seeing as in the time since the PS1 and PS2's release there are literally hundreds of millions more gamers than there was back then meaning there's far more people to buy the consoles.

    So to sum up, I haven't avoided the stat you mention, it just simply wasn't worth mentioning because it's an outright meaningless stat. It's like Microsoft pointing out Vista sales have been higher than previous versions of Windows - well yeah, because there's more PCs sold nowadays with Windows preinstalled than there was back then, that doesn't mean it's a success however because as with the PS3 - in the grand scheme of things overall take up is currently extremely slow.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like