FAMITSU sales (5/24 – 5/30) -- SMG2 in 1st!

[trestres]

TheSource said:

Galaxy 2 did provide a 10% boost, by M-C figures. That enough to be outside statistical noise.

Trestres there is a big difference between selling 20k / week with 50% price cuts worth 30,000 Yen or whatever it is with a 5m base, and selling 20k / week with a single 20% price cut worth only 5,000 Yen and a base of over 10m. I went on record alot in 2008 / 2009 that it was possible that Wii / PS3 in Japan would end up similar to the DS / PSP back and forth of 2008 in Japan during some future point. Given that DS and PSP are very similar in terms of philosophy, pricing and demographics to Wii and PS3 respectively is it really surprising to see this:

            DS / PSP                            Wii / PS3                            DS: PSP            Wii: PS3

2004    1394k /476k         2006     957k / 473k                   3:1                        2:1

2005     4228k/2254k       2007      3674k/1219k               2:1                       3:1

2006    8404k/1884k        2008      2893k/894k                 9:2                        10:3

2007     7209k/3108k       2009       1974k/1767k              9:4                       10:9

2008      4017k/3671k      2010          ?? / ??                        10:9

2009      4037k/2302k                                                             11:6                                                

2010      ???

 

Basically, DS grew from 2004 to 2006 and has declined since. Wii grew from 2006 to 2007 and has declined since. DS had a high peak, while PSP had a low, but late peak - so 2008 was really close. Wii had a high peak, but PS3 had a late peak, so 2009 was really close. Without the PS3 Slim & FFXIII long term boosts this year, Sony needs to be something like 700,000 ahead of its 2009 pace to match it in 2010, or another massive price cut and game push at the end of the year. Nintendo probably doesn't have to be as far up heading into December since the price cut came later in 2009. My hunch is Wii will be right around 2m again, while PS3 will decline to maybe 1.6m and the gap will slowly grow again as it has with DS.

Source, I'm not criticizing the preview, but perhaps you should consider that the store you use as sample may sell more Wii's than the average.

Why would the Wii stay flat and PS3 decline though? PS3 has been consistently up this year, and so has the Wii. Since the PS3 Slim launch, PS3 has outsold the Wii in total figures, and they are now head to head. I can't see how PS3 will start going down and Wii up all of a sudden, unless something big happens, and there's nothing big happening as far as I'm concerned. PS3 has a steady flow of medium to big games (100k-200k sellers) coming out for it until the holidays, while the Wii's line-up is empty outside a couple releases which are too few and inbetween (Wii Party, DQM:BRV and Xenoblade).

Then there's the wildcards for the PS3 like 3D games, Move, GT5 and FFvsXIII; meanwhile Wii still has Vitality Sensor, Zelda and The Last Story.

I think overall it's pretty balanced, so I see no reason why PS3 should be decreasing and Wii increasing. I think 2010 will be PS3's peak year, too bad we don't have graphs anymore, otherwise we could make a more accurate comparison.