Will the PS3 pass XBOX 360 sales in 08?

[Bodhesatva]

rocketpig said:

superchunk said:
No. PS3 will outsell 360 by a decent margin. But, it will be 2009 at the earliest that PS3 passes 360 in WW numbers.

On a side not, possibly never in NA, but the difference in Others and Japan will more than make up for it.

Even 2009 is highly unlikely. To do that, the PS3 has to start outselling the 360 by 71,000 every week from here on out just to tie the 360 on January 1st, 2010.

 The numbers need to be crunched more fully to really drive home how deep the hole for the PS3 is. Rocketpig has touched on it here, but I'll elaborate. Let's start with a few assumptions that heavily favor the PS3: let's assume the 360 will sell 25 percent less hardware next year compared to this one. That seems unlikely, given further price drops and an increasingly strong library, but we'll just be nice here. This year, the 360 has sold almost exactly 7.7 million units worldwide this year as of December 22nd: let's be nice and assume it only sells 300k worlwide in the last 9 days of the year. In other words, we're at about 8 million worldwide for this year, on the dot.

25 percent less than that is 6 million for the year of 2008, worlwide. The PS3 is currently 7.28 million units behind the 360. Now, the numbers:

The PS3 has sold 7.17 million units this year, and thus will likely end up around 7.5 million units at actual year's end.  

The PS3 sold (approximately) 7.5 million units this year worldwide.
That is 144k per week, on average, worldwide
That is 577k per month, on average, worldwide

To outsell the 360 within the next year, the PS3 needs to sell approximately 13.28 million systems. 

That is  256k systems per week, on average, worldwide.
That is 1,024k systems per month, on average, worldwide.

 For differential calculations:

The PS3 would need to outsell the 360 by approximately 140k every week.
The PS3 would need to outsell the 360 by approximately 520k every week month. 

In effect, the 360 would need to see a significant reduction in sales (for no particular reason) and the PS3 would need to nearly double its output to accomplish this feat. In addition, the PS3 needs to outsell the 360 by 140k a week next year. It just isn't going to happen, folks.