The big news this week was the appearance of the new PS3 slim model in American stores from the 25th August, along with the Xbox360 price drop (Pro and Elite SKUs) on the 27th August. Looking firstly at American hardware sales, the effects of this can be immediately seen:
As you can see, PS3 sales more than doubled this week and Xbox360 sales increased by 30% - both consoles outsold Wii this week (although the margins of error are such that the best we can realistically say is that it is a three-way tie) – only the 3rd time PS3 has beaten Wii since launch. There are a few important points to note here:
PS3 slims were not fully available at all retailers across the country for the whole week, availability has increased as the week progressed so I expect sales to be higher the week ending 5th September with full availability across the whole country.
Core retailers (Gamestop, Best Buy, Gamecrazy and Amazon) saw PS3 sales increases of up to 200% this week, while casual retailers (Walmart, Target, Meijer) saw increases closer to 50%. This is entirely predictable but means that as word gets around about the new model and price cut, we expect the casual retailers to continue to see increases to match those seen at the core retailers – in other words sales should remain high for a number of weeks yet – a lot of this depends on how well Sony advertises the price cut and new model.
Xbox360 price cut only came into effect at the end of the week so again next week’s sales should be higher still with a full week and as word gets around. Word is that sales this week are up significantly already so it could be close again next week.
Sales for both consoles have been artificially low in the last few weeks as consumers await the new deals so percentage increases can sometimes be a little misleading.
PSP hardware also increased 80% - mainly due to the Dissidia hardware bundle. Year-on-year, Xbox360 sales still see the biggest increase (50% up) but that will become flat or even down in coming weeks since it was this time last year that the Arcade SKU price cut came into effect.
Moving onto worldwide hardware, PS3 sales are down significantly in both Japan and Other Regions as consumers await the official PS3 slim release. Xbox360 saw a similar boost in Europe to America with worldwide hardware sales passing 140,000 units for the first time since April.
The software chart saw a number of big new releases this week. Batman Arkham Asylum debuted to over 800,000 units worldwide – 51% on PS3 and 49% on Xbox360 – becoming one of the biggest debuts of the year so far. Dissidia: Final Fantasy sold over 170,000 copies in America, less than the 230,000 opening for Crisis Core, but still an impressive number. Metroid Prime Trilogy and Professor Layton and Pandora's Box also did impressive numbers. In Japan, Tomodatchi Collection held on to the number one spot with another 80,000 units sold as Dragon Quest IX also continues to sell well.
Looking ahead to next week the, the big release is Guitar Hero 5 on Xbox360, PS3, Wii and PS2. Preorders are already over 250,000 in America so week one sales should be strong. The Gundam PS3 bundle launches in Japan which should do solid numbers and PS3 hardware sales in general should be up significantly with some predicting as high as 100,000! Dissidia and Metroid Prime Trilogy launch in Europe, and the official PS3 slim launch should easily double PS3 hardware in Europe next week as well as we find out how successful Sony’s new model is going to be.
The full data will be posted on VGChartz in the next few hours so be sure to check the charts out:
http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5039
great news for ps3 good news for 360
09-03-2009, 12:36 PM
