360 and PS3 sales..

[binary solo]

You know the really interesting thing about this graph http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=200 is that for the first time (for me) I've inserted the PS2 sales since launch line. I never appreciated how dang close PS3 sales were to PS2 for the first half of PS3's LTD. So really Sony didn't screw up the launch of PS3 it made a cock up at the halfway mark to date.

Of course one must pull out the obligatory sales since launch graph every time someone suggests PS3 needs to overtake 360 with one year's less sales time in order for PS3 to be counted as having "beaten" the 360.

I don't think anyone is under the illusion that the PS3 can overtake the 360 sales if you are going to compare how many consoles each system has sold at any given arbitrarily chosen date. And if you define "win" by those terms then you are merely stacking the deck in favour of your chosen system. It's like telling Usain Bolt's younger brother that he needs to win a 100 metre race against an athelete of similar ability, but that athelete gets a 10 metre head start because you are Usain Bolt's younger brother. Sure that Athelete will win the race (barring a pulling a hamstring) but the race itself is a sham.

You can define win in whichever way you want for your own personal sense of self worth (I own the winning system; Wii excluded of course since it's not a hardcore, HD, console). But if you want to inject some objectivity into this race then you have a more complex situation and it isn't a simple matter of who has the most lifetime sales on a given day of the year. The winner between PS3 and 360 will be all about who has the momentum at the "end". Assuming PS3 does legitimately have a 10 year cycle, and the 360 has a 5 or 6 year cycle then I suggest the end is when the 360 cycle is over.  The winner between 360 and PS3 will be which system has the sales momentum at that point, it won't be which one has the most LTD sales. Whether the reality comes out to be that the PS3 cycle will also be over at the same time, or before, is not relevant for the purposes of this hypothetical discussion.

For comparison let's look at sales since launch between PS2, 360 and XB: http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2®1=All&cons2=XB®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=200 again XB since launch tracked very close to PS2, and so did the 360, and for much of the early period of the XB's life the graph is actually above the PS2 graph. So it was tracking very nicely. But then the wheels fell off and the XB line started to diverge from the PS2 line in a downward trend from which it never recovered. It seems there is a point at about 1 year after launch that a system will kick on to bigger and better things, or it will languish in mediocrity for the remainder of it's life (excuse the poetic licence taken here, I do not mean to accuse the XB of being a mediocre piece of hardware).

 You can see from this graph http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS3®1=All&cons2=XB®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=200 comparing PS3 to XB to 360 that the PS3 in relation to the 360 is not following the same track that the XB did in relation to the PS2. In fact at that key 1 year after launch mark the PS3 kicked on much better than the 360 did. I think that is partly explained by the fact of PS3's brand reputation (of which there was none for the XB) and the fact that PS3 launched only 1 year after the 360, whereas the XB gave up too much of a head start to the PS2.

At this point we discount the Wii, not because it is irrelevant, but going back to Usain Bolt (or Michael Schumacher back in the day), we know who is getting the gold by a wide margin, and like Bolt the Wii is a freak of nature (said in the most complimentary way possible), so the interesting race is really about silver and bronze.

Yes there is the argument that if you turn up to a race late then that's your own fault and the race is still judged on who crosses the line first (esp since PS3 could have launched with DVD rather than Blu-ray at the same time as the 360). But that's where the racing analogy breaks down, because if you turn up late for a race then you don't even get to start.

So what can we take from the since launch graph comparing PS3 to the 360? It is that the key question of momentum will be significantly influenced by this holiday season. The PS3 sales line is on a convergent path with the 360's right now and if Sony screws up this holiday then the momentum for the rest of the generation is likely to be with the 360, and the PS3 sales line will dip below the 360's and remain there. If the PS3, as most PS3 fans are hoping and predicting, has a good holiday season then the momentum is likely to be with the PS3 for the remainder of the generation (PS3 graph diverging upwards away from the 360 graph). And now the Wii comes back into the picture, because if the PS3 has an outstanding holiday season the PS3 may even have the momentum over the Wii for the remainder of the generation (PS3 line converging towards the Wii line, but will never catch it).

In this business it's not so much how you start, but how you end. At the end total LTD sales will only really matter to the rabid fans who spend way to much time on sites like this, hurling abuse at the rabid fans of competing systems.

So, for my part this is how I would define "win" at the end of this generation, and try to be objective about it while acknowledging I have a conflict of interest by having a personal preference for the PS3: Wii wins, no question. For the minor placings, if the since launch lines of the 360 and PS3 are on divergent paths relative to one another then the line on top is the silver medalist. If the lines are basically running parallell, its effectively a tie because they both carry the about the same momentum into the next generation. If you want a tie breaker because someone must get the silver and someone must get the bronze then I would base the tie breaker on whether the 360 has given up some of its original lead at the time the PS3 launched.

Of course if one wants to look at the bigger picture and assess this generation's battle in the context of the inter-generational war then the Wii still wins massively (and it neede to win otherwise I would have wagered Nintendo's exit from the home console market). And we can all call the PS vs. XB race right now. XB takes this generation purely on the basis that there is a competition between PS3 and 360. I think it's doing MS a disservice to lay that all at Sony's door, sure Sony gave up a 1 year headstart (didn't hurt Wii though) and made a number of missteps from design, to pricing to advertising and more besides. But MS still had to make a high quality machine, and all jibes about RROD and E74 aside, the machine has got good game, even if it occasionally has to take an injury break from time to time. Regardless of whether MS takes silver or bronze this gen (by whatever way you want to define the race) MS takes a lot more momentum into the next gen than they had with XB coming into this gen, and Sony takes a lot less momentum into the next gen (assuming they enter) than they had with PS2 coming into this gen.

Ulitmately who wins is detemined not by individual system's sales, but by who exits the console hardware game last. This generation is simply one leg in a race that has an indetrminate end. And as we've seen from the exit of Sega and other companies before some dirty tactics have and will be used in the pursuit to gain the ultimate victory.