Who will be on top JAPAN LTD: PS3 or Wii?

[postofficebuddy]

jarrod said:

postofficebuddy said:

jarrod said:

The way things are going, I think we'll see PS3 finish around 9m, Wii around 13m.  Japan just doesn't want home consoles anymore.

That seems extremely pessimistic for both consoles. Like I mentioned above 13 million is the rock-bottom minimum I can see for the Wii. That basically assumes sales drop off a cliff this year and DQX doesn't see a 2011 release and it sells sub-1 million this year. Than assuming DQX is a 2012 release it has minimal impact on HW and the Wii falls off predictably. And even under that scenario it could still crawl to 13.5-14 million if Nintendo keep it around long enough. And in regards to PS3, looking at the current YOY trends it will probably end the year around 8 million. You think it will only do another million lifetime after that? 10 million pretty much looks like a mathematical certainty at this point, with 11-12 being the most likely outcome.

I see my figures as more realistic.  Wii and PS3 both sold around 1.5 million in 2010 in Japan, both are going to sell less this year, and it's probably just a few years until both are done putting in significant years of sales at all (Wii especially, it likely has 2 years max).  Japan's also moved on from home consoles for the most part, and having 3DS and NGP on the market this year is just going to further cannibalize what's left.  I see this as especially dangerous for PS3, NGP really makes it an entirely unnecessary platform from a Japanese perspective.

On the other hand saying something like 12m PS3s sold lifetime is likely, essentially doubling it's current userbase... well, that's pretty optimistic to say the least.  In fact, I'd say it's fantasy.

Doubling its current userbase would be 13 million. And I didn't say 12 million, I gave a range of 11-12. And if NGP is going to cut into PS3 sales so heavily then why aren't we already seeing the signs of it? Last year DS sales declined sharply almost immediately after the 3DS was announced and even a price cut didn't remedy the situation. PS3, and particularly PSP, aren't showing any signs of slowdown. Last year PS3 sold 1550k. That was simply by maintaining a decent baseline of sales around 20k-25k with handful of semi-spikes on the Torne, Hokuto Musuo, and white model launches. It's already maintaining that baseline and it just got a price cut. Not to mention the fact that PS3's performance last December was as piss-poor as it could have gotten. There's no way it's going to do that poorly this December with FFXIII-2 coming out. And if you think sequels don't push hardware look at MH3P. Next year VsXIII will keep PS3 at least relevant enough to do another million, especially if we see another price cut in 2012 as well.