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TRios_Zen on 13 October 2011
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binary solo said:
TRios_Zen said:

Not sure this how reasonable of an approach this is though...

Let's be honest, the 360 does not compete with the PS3 in Japan, full stop.  Lifetime sales, yearly sales, this weeks sales, no matter how you cut it, the PS3 dominates the 360 in Japan.  The total lifetime sales of the 360 n Japan are negligible to the 360's total market and could be removed from thier sales numbers with little impact.  Additionally, the PS3 is available in areas that the 360 is not.  These two factors skew the worldwide numbers...in fact, even you say "PS3 beat 360 massively in Japan and EMEAA, it's only Americas which kept it from being an arse whipping." but that isn't really true, is it?  Take out the 900K lead that Japan has provided the PS3 this year and the sales in area where the 360 is not avaialable and has the EMEAA REALLY been anywhere near an "arse" whipping difference in sales?

Now, I am not saying that Worldwide numbers are not important.  Worldwide install base is an important number and I'm SURE Microsoft would prefer to be much more competitive in Japan.  But picture a scenario where the 360 dominates the American market, ties or wins EMEAA the rest of this year, and only doesn't overtake PS3 sales because of the big difference in sales in Japan.  Do you think Microsoft would look at that as a "worldwide loss"?  Does that ever growing gap in sales in Japan have any effect on the western market and thier install base for the rest of this generation?

All that being said, I would guess that the only way the 360 overtakes the PS3 sales WORLDWIDE this year, is to drop the price.  That might allow the sales in the US and EMEAA to elevate over the holiday season to not only mitigate the losses in Japan, but normalize the sales this year to a higher total level than the PS3. 

In a thread that's talking about WW total sales for the year it's the only thing that is relevant. Regional sales are merely spin. Now if the thread is about relative importance of specific markets for a company's profitability, their ongoing presence in the console business, and their desire (if they have it) to dominate the console business then regional success becomes a much more significant consideration. Dominating in the USA plays a huge role in profitability and survivability. Probably the most important role. But we can also see that USA isn't the be all and end all. PSP has been a successful handheld, to the extent that Sony is releasing a second handheld. But Japan is a far more important market for PSP than USA. But as I say, for the purposes of this thread bragging that X region + Y region for Console A > for Console B is irrelevant in a WW sales showdown unless you can conclusively show that region Z is going to greatly diminish in sales for Console B, or greatly increase in sales for Console A.

Sorry, I'm not sure we are discussing the same thing here; I'm not spinning regional sales, nor did I make any indication that I was discussing profitability, ongoing presence in the market, etc.  I'm also not trying to brag about anything the 360 sales are doing.

I am only stating that Japanese console sales are an outlier for the 360 which skew the worldwide numbers.  Without acknowledging this you (or anyone) could say things like  "without the US sales, worldwide sales would greatly favor the PS3" or "even with a 500 million marketing campaign the 360 still lost worldwide" (both paraphrased) as if that REALLY meant the 360 was losing sales WORLDWIDE.  I have tried to refute these statements as not factually correct, given the above mentioned disparity.  In fact, IMO, the only things you could factually say about PS3 vs 360 sales is that the 360 is winning the American market, the PS3 is winning the Japanese market and the EMEAA market is where the battle is at.

I have also acknowledged that for the simple sum of worldwide sales you WOULD have to include all numbers - and I gave my assessment as to how I thought the 360 could overcome the huge discrepancy in sales in Japan.