GamePro reports NPD sales data:
| Console | June sales |
|---|---|
| Wii | 666,700 |
| PS3 | 405,500 |
| Xbox 360 | 219,800 |
| PS2 | 188,800 |
Of note, these are sales to end users, not number of consoles shipped; Microsoft prefers to cite the latter.
The Wii is now the #1 console in the US by installed base. So it seems as though as predicted, the Xbox 360’s best days could be behind it.
Once Sony got their act together and shipped a bundle with the rumble controller packaged along with the console, sales took off. When the 80GB PS3 with rumble controller replaces the current 40GB package, expect sales to rise again. It won’t take long to erase the lead in installed base Microsoft has.
This week, people are making a big thing about the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is going to be cross-platform, appearing on the 360 as well as the PS3–but only in the US, as nobody in Japan has a 360.
I don’t see the Final Fantasy announcement as all that big of a deal, when you look at all the former Xbox exclusives that are now on the PS3 or will be soon.
- Saints Row was the Xbox’s supposed GTA-killer, and Saints Row 2 is going to be on PS3.
- BioShock was the 360’s highest rated game of 2007 on Metacritic. It’s now coming to PS3, with "graphical improvements".
- Half-Life ’s developer Valve was always a staunch Microsoft supporter, with Half-Life 2 an Xbox exclusive–but The Orange Box came out for PS3 earlier this year. (I’ve picked up a copy–FPSs aren’t really my thing, but I want to play Portal.)
- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion made it onto the PS3.
- Dead or Alive 4 is being ported, and it’s rumored that the sequel may be PS3 exclusive.
- Ridge Racer 6 was Xbox 360 only, Ridge Racer 7 switched to PS3 only.
- Full Auto was Xbox 360 only, Full Auto 2 is on PS3.
So looking at the high profile well-reviewed Xbox exclusives, that leaves Command and Conquer, Project Gotham Racing, Mass Effect, Gears of War, and of course Halo. (Dead Rising is heading to the Wii, along with Beautiful Katamari.) It’s a good job Microsoft bought so many game companies, or they would hardly have any exclusives left at this point.
So the video game industry will avoid Microsoft domination for another generation. I think this is a good thing.
Tagged: Microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, Sony, video games, Wii, Xbox 360
6 Responses to “Console wars”
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July 18th, 2008 at 18:54 -0600
Do you mean that the Wii is the no 1 Next Gen console? Surely the Wii doesn’t have a bigger installed base than the PS2?
The PS2 has sold over 127 million worldwide as of the end of last year - I know some of these will have died therefore shouldn’t count towards an installed base, but it would seem that the market share between consoles for the US would have to be massively different to the global ones for the Wii to have caught up already.
July 18th, 2008 at 19:37 -0600
Yes, obviously the PS2 install base still dwarfs the Wii. Also, if you include handhelds, the DS’s install base dwarfs the Wii. However, I was only considering the current generation of non-portable console hardware.
And the US is massively different from the rest of the world. The US actually buys Xbox systems.
July 19th, 2008 at 07:50 -0600
As a guy I work with says “The XBox was designed for a 13 year old American boy called Todd who stands an above average chance of being involved in a high school shooting”.
XBox does OK over here too, primarily off the back of Live, though obviously the global terms the UK market is borderline irrelevant.
Reading something the other day analysts are predicting that the PS3 will overtake the Wii around 2011 which feels about right. PS3 prices are still slightly high for many people but anecdotally people aren’t playing their Wii’s as much as they once did and are getting more interested in the PS3 games line up, particularly now BluRay is the undisputed high definition disc format.
But back to the overall point - you don’t hear anyone talking about Xbox these days.
July 23rd, 2008 at 21:10 -0600
The XBox was designed for a 13 year old American boy
I don’t think it was designed for this demographic — there’s nothing about the technical specifications that make it more suitable for God of War than for Viva Piñata. Nonetheless it’s ended up being marketed towards that demographic, and the selection of games is correspondingly skewed that way.
This is basically a fact about the U.S. video game development community in general, not Microsoft in particular: U.S. developers overwhelmingly make game for teenage boys. The Xbox is at best a marginal factor: after all, it’s not the case that there are lots of U.S. developers making great games for other demographics on the Wii or the PS3.
July 23rd, 2008 at 21:26 -0600
This brings up the interesting question of why US game developers overwhelmingly favor Microsoft platforms while developers in other countries do not.
July 23rd, 2008 at 22:31 -0600
Size and wealth of the market, basically. In the U.S. many people had PCs at home and played games on them; in the rest of the world this was much less the case, as PCs were (historically at least) much more expensive than consoles so you wouldn’t buy a PC to play games at home unless you were as rich as an American. If you had a PC at home at all then it was shared between the whole family (e-mail, web browsing, homework etc) and not dedicated to gaming.
So the U.S. developers followed their local market (of PC gamers) and the rest of the world followed theirs (of console gamers), leading to the current state of affairs even though the rest of the world is richer now and has more PCs in households.
The main exception seems to be online gaming, which I think is largely PC-based, even outside the U.S.