Categories: Gaming, General Tags: E3, game release, GS, Gunslinger Gaming, motion controls, Playstation 3, Playstation Move, PS3, Sony, Wand
PS3 still in the red; promising signs for 2010.
The Sony Playstation 3 had a lot of loss ground to make up. After finally edging out its own system, the PS2, in annual sales, the PS3 still came in a distant third after the Xbox360 and the Nintendo Wii. The last 12 month annual sales period ended on March 31st, 2010, so where now does Sony stand in the console war?
Sony lost $435.6 million last year. As daunting of a figure as that may be, that is an improvement from the year prior that cost Sony a whopping $1.05 billion. PSP sales dropped from 14.1 million units sold to 9.9 million.
According to Sony,
“Game sales decreased due to unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates and decreases in unit sales of PSP hardware and of PS2 software, although unit sales of PS3 software increased……Despite PS3 hardware cost reductions and increased unit sales of PS3 software, profitability deteriorated primarily due to lower unit sales of PS2 software and of PSP hardware.”
There are promising signs for the PS3, however. Sony did meet their (what was once considered unlikely) goal of selling 13 million PS3 systems. Much of those sales came in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, which very well may point towards 2010 being a good year for the PS3.
[Source: Gamespot.com]
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A development presentation of Sony's 3D firmware for the PS3.
Scheduled for the summer of 2010, Sony plans to release firmware for the Playstation 3 system that will enable the system to play games (
Blue-Ray support will be a separate release) with 3D effects. In the near future, gamers could enjoy 3D effects in their favorite games much like they enjoyed the enhancement in blockbuster movies such as
The Avatar.
There are a few catches, however. Just because firmware is being released, doesn’t mean that players will immediately be able to put in Modern Warfare 2, for example, and become engrossed in 3D warfare. Game makers will need to re-release these titles with 3D production. Also, the 3D enhancement comes at a price. According to David Coombes, Sony’s Platform Research Manager, playing games in 3D could cut their console’s processing power in half.
[Source: IGN.com]
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The official numbers for May have been released by the NPD Group, and for the third straight month, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter’s forecasts have missed the mark.
But that’s very good news for Sony in their battle with Microsoft for second place in the next-gen race.
Pachter had predicted XBox to outsell PlayStation 3 for the month of May in North America, but Sony wound up selling 208,700 units while 186,600 XBox 360 consoles were sold during the same period of time.
Nintendo won for May altogether with 671,000 units sold.
While Playstation 3 was number two this month, it was expected that GTA IV would translate into big hardware sales. It didn’t.
“The continued success of GTA IV is not translating into big hardware sales for either the PS3 or the 360 but there may yet to be a lift in June due to gift-giving for Father’s Day and graduations,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.
Sure, Microsoft has slashed the price of Xbox 360 in order to try to get an edge against PS3. And yes, Nintendo’s DS still outsells Sony’s PSP.
But that doesn’t mean that Sony isn’t having an incredible fiscal year nonetheless.
Head honcho Jack Tretton recently revealed how the company is ahead of the game with PlayStation 3 and PSP.
“We are tracking at 100 percent up over last year,” he said in an interview with Reuters. “…About 30 percent ahead of where we should be. So sales could slow down and we will still hit our number.”
In fact, if the trend continues, there may be some heartbreak when the holidays roll around.
“I’d say we are able to meet somewhere between 80-90 percent demand, based on how things are trending,” said Tretton. But even if supply does get limited, he said that the shorages would not be “drastic”.
