Resident_Hazard said:
The first year the PS3 was out, things were so bad that an article surfaced at GameSpot.com which revealed Sony "pleading" with third party devs not to abandon the system. Another GameSpot article (from late summer 2007) revealed that Capcom, Sega, Namco-Bandai, and Square-Enix were all yanking various amounts of PS3 support to focus more on the surprise hits Wii and DS.
That article was made by a journalist who refused to give anyone the name/source he had gotten the information from.
Which in turn lead to him being ridiculed by other sites:
http://pswi60.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/news-that-smells-funny-sony-begs-for-3rd-party-devs/
Of course, Sony may have indeed begged third parties for support, but I certainly wouldn't cite that article as reference.
Take a look at EA's recent revenue announcment, their biggest mistake would have been to abandon the PS3.
Sony's sales are up this year over last, but when you look at the numbers, their increase happens to coincide with Blu-Ray's win over HD-DVD--not because Sony is doing anything better. Multiplatform games still sell better on the Xbox360*.
No doubt the Blu-ray victory helped, but to put the recent sucess of the PS3 all down to the Blu-ray victory?
Sony underwent some huge changes between launch and this year. Some heads rolled, the advertising department changed everything, a price drop occured, and Sony brought out some big exclusive titles.
If Blu-ray was the only reason the PS3 managed to start selling well, the software sales for the platform could not possibly be so high.
*See Devil may Cry 4 and the total Xbox360 userbase.
Now,
The PS3's sales are up over last year, and it finally got it's killer app (MGS4) out, but only after other intended killer apps (Lair, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, and Haze) all failed the system in one way or another. It still has the fewest exclusive titles of the three major consoles, and for HD development, the Xbox360 is still pretty much the first choice with the PS3 getting ports. And the PS3's current level of success is phenominal when you consider just how many black marks it had against it that first year.
Lair and Haze undoubtably failed the system, and while HS and Uncharted might not have moved as much software as Sony might have hoped, they were still far from complete failures.
For HD development there seems to have been a shift recently, with even EA making the PS3 the lead platform for some of it's titles.
Currently, the sales of the PS3 only barely top the Xbox360, and with price cuts of potentially all X360 models coming just in time for the holiday rush, MS could temporarily reverse this current sales trend, if for nothing more than a 2-4 month period around the holidays. Sales increases do happen with price cuts, but typically only last for a month or two. Since this latest X360 drop is coming near the holidays, it could last through to January.
50k is barely topping? (See lasts weeks figures.)
Possibly, the future figures will tell.
The major point is that the Xbox360's lead may be just enough to prevent the PS3 from ever actually overtaking it. While the PS3 has outsold it for most of 2008, it hasn't outsold it by enough of a margin to show any real threatening growth. And next year, sales will most likely be much lower simply because that's how it goes the longer a system is out (with the bizarre exceptions of the DS and PS2 which seemed to be able to maintain substantial steam for amazing periods of time). Meanwhile, Sony has claimed that it will not drop the price of the PS3 in the near future because "they can't afford it."
Most posters assume Spring/Summer 2010 or therabouts.
Closing on it by almost 2 million isn't threatenting growth??
The PS3 COULD potentially topple the Xbox360 by the end of this generation--I won't say it's impossible, but I don't think it will happen. Last time, the Xbox and GameCube finished at 24 and 21 million respectively. I think that the difference between Xbox360 and PS3 sales at the end may be closer to each other than that (a difference of 3 million), but closer overall to 30-35 million since I believe this generation will last 1-3 years longer than the average length of the previous generation, which was about 5.5-6 years long depending on when you measure.
The end matter will be the fact that the PS3 will have the fewest exclusives and throughout it's lifecycle. The Wii will have the most simply because, with less power under it's hood, three games can be made for it in the time it takes to craft one for the PS3--and since the Wii's sales are literally twice that of the PS3, it makes more sense for developers financially. Sony themselves have killed several 1st & 2nd party titles already, not the least of which was Heavenly Sword 2. Currently, things look okay for the PS3, but only a year ago, much support was dropped. What we're seeing now are ports of Xbox360 games and titles that studios chose to finish up before potentially dropping the console. I'm not saying it'll happen, but it's entirely possible that the PS3 could end up seeing an uncomfortable drought in new titles, multi-platform and exclusive, toward the end of it's life. Just like the N64 and the ill-fated Saturn. Developers finished their games, and then gradually dropped the system to work on the more successful platform of the time: The Playstation.
You actually believe that some studios would drop the PS3?
Perhaps some of the smaller ones, unable to allocate resources, but then they were never going to release titles on it in the first place. What you are seeing is some studios releasing old titles from the 360 onto the PS3 for some easy money. Then to release the next installment of the franchise on both the 360 and PS3 down the line. If anything the PS3 is gaining support. (Saints Row 2 is one example of that.)
Also, each generation (aside from the 16-bit days) seems to have one system that, towards the end, has the vast majority of 3rd party support while the competing systems gradually lose it. This time, that will most likely be the Wii. Some of us may think that it's skewed too much to the casuals right now, but in a year or two, it will begin getting crowded with hardcore titles--many of which we know about already. Why? Because that's where the sales numbers are. Even the most hardcore gamers will likely begin moving to toward the Wii by late 2009, just as many early GC and Xbox adopters moved to the PS2, and just as many early N64 and Saturn adopters moved to the PS1--just as I did back then.
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