TheSource said:
Two things...
1) I don't see a typo in that paragraph. Am I going blind?
2) Brett and I don't really buy the PS3 shortages. Sony (John Koller I think it was) has said "supply would be tight" - but thats really a shortage, its slightly different. I say that mainly because Sony (in this case) / Microsoft don't always provide the models people want to buy and end up overstocking the models people don't want. Looking back, when the Wii has had shortages, it seems to be more that Nintendo didn't want demand to fall off a cliff and supplied only enough volume to keep pace steady.
SCE does business in 99 countries if you read its corporate press releases - shipping 10,000 PS3s or whatever it is to 50 little markets per quarter in addition to the big markets of Western Europe, Japan, North America, Australia, Brazil and South East Asia has a way of adding up, and I think thats why the figures for PS2, PSP, and PS3 suggest more stock on shelves than for Nintendo / Microsoft stuff. The main reason I have PS3 beating X360 is that Sony beats Microsoft in most of the little markets. Worldwide you have something like -
USA - X360 > PS3
Canada - X360 > PS3
Mexico - X360 > PS3
UK - X360 > PS3
Australia - X360 > PS3
Scandanavia - X360 > PS3
Pretty much every other country that buys video games in the world though appears to favor PS3 over X360. For big markets, that wouldn't be enough - USA Canada Mexico UK Aust Scandanavia is 55% or so of the market - with mainland Europe, South Korea and Japan and a few other favoring PS3, but those small little markets that Sony taps or will tap are in rapidly developing / growing countries and so that 55% slips a bit each year.
The other thing is, the X360 software market, if you compare our 2008 to 2009 figures, and even the hardware market has also been flat / declining slightly while PS3 is still growing a bit. My guess is retailers are willing to gamble more on the growing market and less so on the shrinking market, unless its still massively bigger.
The truth is alot of publishers are already struggling on the current machines even as the bases continue to grow, and so right about when PS3 reaches a point where it can't / forever overtakes X360, the next generation should be arriving - and HD / Wii support will beging vanishing.
If you compare 2009 to 2008 the following publishers sold less games on Wii, X360 and PS3.
Wii 2008 SW > 2009 - Take Two, Konami, Sega, Nintendo
PS3 2008 SW > 2009 - Take Two, Ubisoft, Sega, Konami
X360 2008 SW > 2009 - Microsoft, Ubisoft, Take Two, Sega, Konami
Its great if Sony / Microsoft don't want to release new systems until 2013 or whatever but more than a couple publishers are already losing out and the trend is continuing into 2010 - so the era of exclusivity is over and like I said in the piece publishers basically see PS3 / X360 as on par with each other now. Even EA / Activision look like they may have trouble meeting their 2009 SW sales on PS3 / X360 / Wii. The only publishers who really look better off than last year are Ubisoft (Wii strength), Take Two (Red Dead), and Square-Enix (FFXIII) on the console side and so I'd imagine the chorus calls for new systems will get stronger shortly.
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