The Xbox 360's year head start did many things to hamper Sony. However what really drove this point along is how well Microsoft integrated XBL into the experience.  Any person who now bought the game was pressured to join the network of their friendds in order to experience the game properly. When sports sims are more enjoyable on your competitors machine sales really suffer with Americans.

XBL is a paid service.  This is a great revenue for M$ and it is good that Sony is trying to make theirs that way.  

XBLA was also another huge feather in the M$ cap. I don't think Sony to this day sells as much digital content as M$ movies or games or what have you.  This creates lots incentive for third parties to create more content for you and exclusively you as we still today.  

I think the direction they are taking with Vita is to combat those issues.  If they can remain as diligent with PS4 remains to be seen.

Ofc its not a succes like earlier consoles from Sony but Wii was taking so much casual and Xbox 360 did very good. Gamecube and Xbox wasnt so strong competion.

Why, when arguing the fact that PS3 has sold less then it´s predecessor, regardless of region, why don´t people actually explain the main reason why that is happening, and start explaining extensively "little" (compared to the main one) reasons why that happened.

The main reason why PS3 lost a lot of Marketshare to the Xbox in America is...... PRICE.

And now let´s explain why was the Ps3 was pricey. Main reason Bluray player.

Long story short, Sony made a long term decision between, do we sell millions of PS3s (by selling a cheaper PS3 but seeing bluray penetration being even slower then it is nowadays), or we push Bluray one more big huge step in DVD territory, and position ourselves to win big money on the format, plus being able to use better, faster, with bigger storage capacity bluray players in future consoles, for half the price the original ps3 bluray player cost them.

This idea that Sony was greedy and though that they would sell 200M with that huge price point, is non sense, they knew, that with that price point, sales will not be big (at least out of the gate), but the long term benefits of doing so were huge.

Main point, PS3 is being described as a failure overall when it comes to sales. In the future, when the Ps4 is out, people will go party, when Sony is able to put an affordable console, with a top of the line bluray player (along with other unknowns)

It was not like Sony sold the PS2 user base to the disc format, they demanded big money for the PS3, but they gave us games, and for me, there is no other console, with such a diverse lineup like the PS3 (current generation), IMO

But there is no denying, that there were things that Sony didn´t do AFTER the console price drops, BUT I totally disagree with Sony being the one to blame for the initial price point, there was no other option considering the benefits in the long term.

I wouldn't consider the PS3 a failure, even compared to the PS2 and PSX. But I don't consider the Sega Saturn a failure either. I may be in the minority on that one, but it still has games on my top 10 list. I'm sure Sony is disappointed by the sales considering they spent so much they will probably never break even with the PS3. Sony keeps throwing money at the PS3 to create killer exclusives, but with the exception of GT5 they just don't sell. Resistance 3 should be a hit, but PS3 owners aren't buying it. Even Uncharted games don't sell incredible well, not bad, but not what Sony need to dig themselves out of the whole they are in.

It's not even Sony's fault really. They did everything they did with the PS2, but this time it didn't work. The market changed and they didn't see it coming.

But the good news is we may have finally seen the market settle. Back in the Atari days there were too many consoles and the market crashed. They Nintendo and Sega split the market 50/50 until the mid 90s when Sony gobbled the market up. By the turn of the century we lost Sega and gained MS. Now it looks like it's going to be a three way market for a long long time. I have a feeling that the next generation is going to be a fairly even split between Nintendo, MS and Sony. And that's a good thing.

I realise it might seem to American's like SCEA = Sony but it is not. In Europe I have seen ALOT of adverts for Resistance 3, even more then for Gears 3. Playstation has outsold Xbox 360 here along time ago despite being for sale 18 months later and at a much higher price.

America might prefer Xbox and so might UK

The rest of the world doesn't.

I don't agree saying that PS3 exclusives don't sell. They have legs.

Uncharted 2 is nearing 5 million sold, Gran Turismo.. Doesn't need a mention, Resistance 1 sold alot

All of these games however, did not see even close to half of their sales in the first month. Gears and Halo do.

You're very much correct, if this topic was about global sales. But, this thread is about America. In the US Uncharted 2 has sold 2.51m. That's still very much a hit, but since you mentioned Halo look at Halo Reach's numbers in America. Reach is at 6.63m and it came out in 2010 while U2 was in 2009. Since you brought up Gears of War let's look at the whole series. In America Gears 1 sold 3.71m, Gears 2 sold 3.91m. So far Gears 3 has sold 2.15m just in the America, it's about to outsell Uncharted 2 in it's first few weeks in the Americas.

Resistance and Killzone series have yet to top 2m in the Americas unless you combine their sales and even then each series would be at 2.99m for Resistance 1,2,3 (R3 is still new so I'm sure it will break 1m) and 2.42m for Killzone 2,3. Let's combine Killzone and Resistance series sales into one big PS3 FPS sale total. The Combined total would be 5.41m. But let's through in and extra million for Resistance 3 for a total of 6.41m. Halo Reach by itself, in America, still outsells it with 6.63m.

Now lets move on to GT5. It has sold a whopping 6.52m total world wide. That's a ton, not as much as previous GT games, but that's a great number. However we are just talking about the Americas. GT5, in America, has sold 1.81m. Forza 3 has sold 2.81m in America. That's about 1m more than GT5. A lot of GT fans like to combine GT5p and GT5 sales, which I don't agree with, but anyway, combined it would be 2.91m in America. So GT5 only outsells Forza 3 in America if you combine it's sales with Prologue's sales, but even then it only outsells it by about 10,000, so it's a wash.

I actually hate playing numbers games. PS3 has fantastic games as well as the Xbox 360 and Wii. But I do find it interesting that PS3 games, in America, have a harder time than Xbox 360. It could be that in the Americas the Xbox 360 has outsold the PS3 by about 12m units. That's a lot so that might be it. It could also be that Xbox 360 owners are only gamers using it exclusively for games while some PS3 owners use it exclusively for Blu-Ray since at launch it was the cheapest Blu-Ray player. I don't know, but it's an interesting cultural topic since in Japan Sony dominates and In Europe it's a close race.

Like I said before. I think it's good that Sony and MS are on fairly equal terms even though in certain markets they may have their edge. It means next gen we will see a balance of power like we did during the golden age of Sega and Nintendo. Back then it didn't matter which system you had, they were almost their own markets and since they were battling over who had 51% of the market gamers on both sides had more games than they could play. It was a good time to be a gamer and right now it's a pretty damn good time to be a gamer as well.

I don't really think it's fair to compare a console to it's predecessor, install bases don't translate over gens, every gen is a completely new game. I mean if ps3 was the successor to xbox everyone would be calling it a massive success. So no I don't think ps3 is a failure not even in american, it isn't exactly a rousing success either though.

its not because of its high price during a recession.

Working in retail as I do I can tell you that, so far as I'm aware,that there is over 90% of the causal factors for the relative PS3 vs 360 sales per title or genre in US.  The 360 is by a fair way the console of choice in the region, and this means not only does it easily pick up more sales, but bundling and promotions have a bigger influence too - for example with Forza which saw a lot of extra sales via bundling in the US.  Even a GT5 bundle would struggle vs a Forza bundle in US simply due to market preference and baseline demand.

With a two holiday season, one year and 12 million lead in the US any PS3 title, exclusive or otheriwse, will struggle against a comparable 360 title unless for some reason the demographic for that title is massively skewed to the PS3.

Obviously this situation is a bit more balance in EMEAA with a less pronounced skew to PS3 while in Japan we see the exact opposite in a smaller market, where the PS3 enjoys a similarly huge HW install base advantage and PS3 titles can easily outsell comparable 360 titles (again apart from dempgraphic exceptions such as FPS).

If anyone puzzles as to why PS3 titles don't do as well in US as though it implies something about the PS3 or the titles itself, they need to wake up and realize it's simply market demographics.  If the US sales imply a weakness of the PS3 then the Japanese (and to a lesser extent EMEAA) sales imply a weakness of the 360.

In reality both consoles at this point are essentially 9% or more identical, with only a few features (cross chat on 360, BR and free online on PS3) seperating them from a HW point of view and only a relatively few titles (in terms of exclusives) seperating them from a software point of view.

Differences in demand and sales are now down to regional preferences based around time of launch, exclsuives and brand preference as well as different demographics - and of course price.