Is the PS3 selling badly? Why do you think it is/isn't?

[johnsobas]

Final-Fan said:

WiteoutKing said:

Final-Fan said:
OKAY. I THOUGHT I SPELLED THIS OUT PRETTY CLEARLY IN THE OP BUT APPARENTLY NOT.

THE PS3 IS SELLING POORLY COMPARED TO THE PS2. IT IS SELLING POORLY COMPARED TO THE WII. IT IS SELLING POORLY COMPARED TO EXPECTATIONS. IT IS SELLING POORLY COMPARED TO SONY'S PREDICTIONS.

COMPARED, COMPARED, COMPARED. NONE OF THAT MEANS THAT THE SALES ARE JUST PLAIN BAD.

The PS3 shouldn't lose developers to the 360, for instance, because it is in fact selling better than the 360. It will probably lose developers to the Wii, though.

This post, in a nutshell, is exactly where you're wrong.

No one expected the Wii to perform this well. It was dead last in the last generation and floundering around trying to get a foothold in the console business. When the Wii came out, it completely exceeded expectations. Even if it sold only half as well as it is now, it would be selling well as far as the industry is concerned.

The Xbox performed poorly last generation. This generation it is performing slightly better in all regions. This is a plus for the Xbox 360. It is not selling particularly well, but it isn't selling particularly poorly either.

The PlayStation 2 was, bar-none, the best-selling console ever. The PlayStation 3 should have been a proper next-step for Sony. It should have been able to live up to the PlayStation brand name that dominated the gaming world for the last decade.

But it didn't.

It's sold horribly, and even despite its recent better sales over the 360, it is still not living up to its brand name. This is why it is considered to sell badly. Because as far as the industry is concerned, the PlayStation 3 is not even remotely close to what it was supposed to be.

Comparisons are everything in this industry. You don't have to be the best to get attention. You just have to do better than you were supposed to.

The PS3 is not doing nearly as well as people thought it would. The industry as a whold is less confident in Sony than it was a year ago.

However, The PS3 is not the giant albatross around Sony's neck that it was viewed to be six months ago. If it has not lived up to its predecessors' name, neither has its failure been nearly as dismal as that of the Saturn (to which it bears many similarities).

The PS3 has been a failure compared to the PS2. That does not make it a FAILURE.

That's pretty damn bad to go from the highest selling system of all time to below gamecube level.  PS won the first gen and absolutely dominated the one after that, it's not that difficult to win again when you have built the brand loyalty that Sony did.  They could have released a $300 system that is HD and slightly less powerful than the 360 and they simply would have dominated.  This is a stupid N64 like mistake that has cost them everything including ALL the money they made during a generation that they dominated more than any system ever has.  If that's not a failure I don't know what is.  I take that back because at least with the N64 they were still profitable, this is even worse than Nintendo's N64 mistake.