How long until PS3 overtakes the 360 in total sales?

[Nidan]

I have been thinking about this for some time, and I think that within the current market, without too many conditions changing, it will take quite some time.

I give you the following example, MS leads by roughly 7.4 Million units at this time, so Sony somehow has to make this figure up. To do this Sony will have to continuously outsell MS each week. So how much does Sony have to continuously outsell MS?.

Well to come up with my rough estimate, I had to make some broad assumptions ( which obviously could change)

Assumption 1. The sales figures used are Average figures over the total life. ( obviously figures will peak and drop over time)

Assumption 2. I don’t know what MS base sales would be over these periods, so i have used three (3) baselines to compare.

1. 3million sales / year
2. 4million sales/ year
3. 5million sales/ year

So for a condition where MS will average 3 million sales / year over the sales period we would have the following

 

	Total PS3 sales from 08 to catch MS within the year indicated	Xbox sales from 08 until the year indicated	Outsell % needed to catch MS
2008	10.4	3	346%
2009	13.4	6	223.00%
2010	16.4	9	182.00%
2011	19.4	12	161%

Even to catch MS by 2011, Sony would have to continuously outsell MS by 161%, and to catch them by the end of 2008, Sony would have to outsell MS by 346%!

For a condition where MS will average 4 million sales / year over the sales period we would have the following

	Total PS3 sales from 08 to catch MS within the year indicated	Xbox sales from 08 until the year indicated	Outsell % needed to catch MS
2008	11.8M	4	295%
2009	15.4	8	192.50%
2010	19.4	12	161.60%
2011	23.4	16	146%

For this condition Sony will have to outsell MS by 146% to catch them by 146%

For a condition where MS will average 5 million sales / year over the sales period we would have the following

 

	Total PS3 sales from 08 to catch MS within the year indicated	Xbox sales from 08 until the year indicated	Outsell % needed to catch MS
2008	12.4	5	248%
2009	17.4	10	174.00%
2010	22.4	15	149.00%
2011	27.4	20	137%

Again Sony would have to outsell MS by 137% to catch them by 2011.

Now, since MS has a huge number of resources and cards to play to keep momentum with their system, and since the majority of sales occur later in the consoles life when the price has fallen, It is my belief that best case scenario is that Sony could catch MS by 2012 if at all based on current market trends.