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Forums - Sales Discussion - The PS1: The Biggest Turnaround in Console History?

Neodegenerate on 28 December 2015
Shadow1980 said:
HomokHarcos said:

Surprising that the Xbox was already selling more than the GameCube in 2002 considering Microsoft just entered the console business.

Halo, man. That game was absolutely huge, and probably the most important launch title since SMB was released alongside the NES over 16 years previous. IIRC something like half of all OXboxes sold in the first six months or so had a copy of Halo attached to them. However, the Xbox was flat YoY in the U.S. in 2003, while the GC grew almost 40%, thus allowing the GC to be the overall winner that year.

As I recall when I went to pick up an xbox on release date EB Games would only sell it as a bundle with 2 games and an additional controller.  I remember grabbing Halo and Tony Hawk 2 X.  Seemed like everyone else in the store at the time was grabbing Halo as well.



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AZWification on 28 December 2015
DonFerrari said:
Shadow1980 said:
HomokHarcos said:

Surprising that the Xbox was already selling more than the GameCube in 2002 considering Microsoft just entered the console business.

Halo, man. That game was absolutely huge, and probably the most important launch title since SMB was released alongside the NES over 16 years previous. IIRC something like half of all OXboxes sold in the first six months or so had a copy of Halo attached to them. However, the Xbox was flat YoY in the U.S. in 2003, while the GC grew almost 40%, thus allowing the GC to be the overall winner that year.

By your own thread I would say FF VII was bigger than Halo 1.

FF7 wasn't a launch title though..





                
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Roronaa_chan on 28 December 2015

And it had so many games better than FF7



DevilRising on 28 December 2015

PS1's biggest problem aside from price, was that it didn't have any truly "MUST HAVE" games at launch, whereas N64 had Mario and Pilotwings (two very good early 3D games), and even Saturn had Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, Panzer Dragoon, and neat little games like Bug and Clockwork Knight. PS1, by comparison, launched with games like Battle Arena Toshinden, ESPN Extreme Games and Street Fighter The Movie: The Game. It had a nice port of Rayman, but that had already been on Atari Jaguar, and it also came to Saturn and PC. The only REALLY good launch title PS1 had was Rider Racer, and even that wasn't exactly "MUST HAVE".

It wasn't until PS1 started getting games like Resident Evil, Tekken Final Fantasy VII, Symphony of the Night and Metal Gear, before the sales really started taking off. And the simple truth is, if Nintendo had merely decided to go with CD format instead of cartridge, most of those games likely would have been N64 titles instead. So PS1 definitely had fortune on it's side in that respect.

But yeah, Saturn and N64 both were FAR better buys out of the gate, and for a good while. PS1 took some time to build up steam, but thanks mostly to a growing library of exclusives and the fact that Sega shit the bed and decided to abandon Saturn too early, PS1 absolutely wound up dominating the gen, eventually.



DonFerrari on 28 December 2015
Shadow1980 said:
DonFerrari said:

By your own thread I would say FF VII was bigger than Halo 1.

Maybe. The four most important games ever—one for each brand—in terms of putting a console brand on the map are Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy VII, and Halo: CE. FFVII had a bigger immediate impact than Halo to be sure. But Halo could very well have kept the Xbox from being an abject failure that would have made the GC's sales look good by comparison. Aside from Halo, the Xbox had precious little to differentiate itself from the PS2 in its first few months. Yeah, it also had DOA3 and PGR, but those weren't anywhere close to being as big as Halo. The Xbox's next notable "exclusive" (which also came to PC) was Morrowind in June 2002, and then Splinter Cell as a timed exclusive in November. That's how slim the pickings were for the Xbox early on in the exclusives deparment. Without Halo the Xbox could have failed miserably.

But yeah, FFVII was definitely a bigger system-seller than Halo, at least in the U.S. and apparently also Japan. We're talking about a system averaging maybe 160k units a month in the U.S. suddenly growing to over 350k, and while it didn't continue shifting hardware all on its lonesome it did open the floodgates. It put the spotlight squarely (heh) on the PS1, and the N64 would never be able to catch back up.

Well so we could say FF VII was the system seller (and even though PS1 had a lot of other games they wouldn't even be know if not for the people that bought them after FF VII make the system relevant), and Halo system floater (that for the 3rd gen could be said to be what made Xbox stay afloat on original and one and also gave confidence for X360).

AZWification said:
DonFerrari said:
Shadow1980 said:

Halo, man. That game was absolutely huge, and probably the most important launch title since SMB was released alongside the NES over 16 years previous. IIRC something like half of all OXboxes sold in the first six months or so had a copy of Halo attached to them. However, the Xbox was flat YoY in the U.S. in 2003, while the GC grew almost 40%, thus allowing the GC to be the overall winner that year.

By your own thread I would say FF VII was bigger than Halo 1.

FF7 wasn't a launch title though..

But if he is talking about NES, SMB wasn't a launch title as far as I know, unless for Murica it have been.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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Qwark on 28 December 2015

It sold so much in Europe it succesfully rooted there and has grow very fast. In 1999 the PS1 equalled the lifetime numbers of the SNES. Almost ten million units that's freaking huge and shows that Nintendo should have treated Europe much better to begin with.



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

DonFerrari on 28 December 2015
SpokenTruth said:
Qwark said:
It sold so much in Europe it succesfully rooted there and has grow very fast. In 1999 the PS1 equalled the lifetime numbers of the SNES. Almost ten million units that's freaking huge and shows that Nintendo should have treated Europe much better to begin with.

People have to understand that Sony was already a massive consumer electronics corporation back then.  They had major retail, distribution, warehousing, wholesales, marketing, etc...all set up in Europe (and elsewhere) that a small company like Nintendo simply couldn't do.  Better stated, Sony was set up to be successful in Europe before the PS even existed.  That's not to take away what Sony accomplished, but to elaborate on why Nintendo never could replicate that even if they wanted to.

Smaller company Sega done better than Nintendo in Europe as well... the always "small Nintendo" excuse can't excuse everything... a company that sells 150M DS and people excuse them having third party representatives in Brazil because they are too humble. I know smaller companies (that profit less than 100M yearly that export and develope more countries than Nintendo).



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

NightDragon83 on 28 December 2015

You can't exactly have a "turnaround" when there wasn't a history of success or failure to begin with. The PS1 launched first in Japan with moderate success, and then 9 months later it launched in the US with what was at that time the biggest launch week for a console in US history (150k units or so I believe, bested the following year by the N64 with about 300k units).

Back then the first year on the market for a console was usually somewhat slow as the big launches we're used to these days weren't commonplace. It wasn't until the 6th gen that consoles began to regularly have huge launches, starting with the Dreamcast launch on 9/9/99 where the console sold over 500k over the 1st 2 weeks.

I'd say the PS3 had the biggest turnaround after a steady but underwhelming launch and first year on the market, only to pick up rapidly and eventually end up outselling the 360 which had a year headstart on it.



On 2/24/13, MB1025 said:
You know I was always wondering why no one ever used the dollar sign for $ony, but then I realized they have no money so it would be pointless.

johnsobas on 28 December 2015
DonFerrari said:
SpokenTruth said:
Qwark said:
It sold so much in Europe it succesfully rooted there and has grow very fast. In 1999 the PS1 equalled the lifetime numbers of the SNES. Almost ten million units that's freaking huge and shows that Nintendo should have treated Europe much better to begin with.

People have to understand that Sony was already a massive consumer electronics corporation back then.  They had major retail, distribution, warehousing, wholesales, marketing, etc...all set up in Europe (and elsewhere) that a small company like Nintendo simply couldn't do.  Better stated, Sony was set up to be successful in Europe before the PS even existed.  That's not to take away what Sony accomplished, but to elaborate on why Nintendo never could replicate that even if they wanted to.

Smaller company Sega done better than Nintendo in Europe as well... the always "small Nintendo" excuse can't excuse everything... a company that sells 150M DS and people excuse them having third party representatives in Brazil because they are too humble. I know smaller companies (that profit less than 100M yearly that export and develope more countries than Nintendo).

Not really a good comparison,  Genesis barely outsold the SNES.  PS1 sold 37 million, genesis sold 8 million.  These are not even close to the same level of success.



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X

DonFerrari on 28 December 2015
johnsobas said:
DonFerrari said:
SpokenTruth said:

People have to understand that Sony was already a massive consumer electronics corporation back then.  They had major retail, distribution, warehousing, wholesales, marketing, etc...all set up in Europe (and elsewhere) that a small company like Nintendo simply couldn't do.  Better stated, Sony was set up to be successful in Europe before the PS even existed.  That's not to take away what Sony accomplished, but to elaborate on why Nintendo never could replicate that even if they wanted to.

Smaller company Sega done better than Nintendo in Europe as well... the always "small Nintendo" excuse can't excuse everything... a company that sells 150M DS and people excuse them having third party representatives in Brazil because they are too humble. I know smaller companies (that profit less than 100M yearly that export and develope more countries than Nintendo).

Not really a good comparison,  Genesis barely outsold the SNES.  PS1 sold 37 million, genesis sold 8 million.  These are not even close to the same level of success.

Seing that the discussion is that Nintendo is too small to sell in Europe smaller Sega outselling it kind of denies the excuse.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."