I've seen a lot of people praising Sony on how they turned the PS3 around from a disastrous launch to nearly/soon overtaking the second most sold console this generation. But is this actually true? From what I can find from the sales data, no it isn't.

PS3 never made a comeback!

Take a look at this picture:

It's from right here: http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php

Or look at this:

It's from http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/File:Worldwide_total_sales_aligned.png and was added in August 2009

And then we have this:

Looking at it it becomes very clear that PS3 never did horribly bad, and always sold on par with the Xbox360, and often even a bit more. The only times X360 sold better were during the Holidays, but aligning the two consoles and we quickly see that PS3 ALWAYS managed to outsell X360. So where precisely IS this comeback? I don't see it. It's not there. PS3 has outsold the X360 pretty consistently ever since its 2nd year, only being outsold during the Holidays, and has consistently outsold it if aligned, except for their 7th year.

Sony never did anything to say that the PS3 made a comeback, because it never really went away. It never did so bad that it had to make a comeback.

This isn't flamebaiting, or trolling or whatever you wanna call it. I know some of you won't agree with me about this, but I just don't see where, or how, the PS3 made a comeback. As a PS fan maybe you wanna tell me what you mean when you're talking about the PS3 comeback?

EDIT:

And here's a comparison with all 3 consoles for those who wants it.

EDIT2:

ethomaz made this graph showing the same data as above, just not aligned.

Are we ignoring the Wii and 2005 now?

You want me to add those as well? Sure, why not, but how would that impact on the PS3 sales?

Hm. Maybe you're right, but why would people on Vgc declare it dead and argue it would be discontinued? Did we have some inaccurate data a couple of years ago? I remember links to thread that its lifetime sales would be 30m tops. See any predictions threads and you'll realize why people say that it made a comeback.

Yes, that is VERY weird, because, looking at these numbers it wasn't doing any worse than the X360.... Beginning with 2008 people SHOULD have thought it was going to overtake the X360; because that's what the figures were showing up until that Holiday...

Actually, yes we did. Ps3 was undertracked during Christmas season in '07 and '08 when I joined (not sure about '09 because I stoped coming here then) and it didn't get adjusted till April the following year when Sony released their financials and it was obviously clear. VGC tried claiming Sony stuffed the channels for christmas season and they didn't sell through. But when the following quarters showed Sony shipping more than the competition it was obvious that was not the case.

lol exactly. A basketball team scvores 25 points in each quarter for 100points but the other team scored 35 in the first 30 in the second 20 in the third and 14 in the fourth.... are we to say team that scored 25 each quarter didn't make a comeback?

But it was selling pretty consistently more than X360 (except for its first year), so that's not making a comeback when you're maintaining your lead... It was actually just a matter of time from the beginning for the PS3 to claim the 2nd spot.

Thanks for clarifying this. Lol. I remember the stuffing the channels argument from several 360 fans for several quarters. It bacame funnier every time.

I think a better analogy would be a marathon; runner #1 gets a head start, and while runner #2 starts later, he/she consistently runs just a little bit faster than #1, which means #2 is gaining on #1 all the time. That's not making a comeback, that's keeping momentum and keeping a faster pace from the beginning. It's not like #2 all of a sudden starts running A LOT faster because he got a poweraid or anything.