Xbox 360 Vs. Playstation 3 2012 - *February* Update

[postofficebuddy]

Seece said:

postofficebuddy said:

As others have pointed out all this talk is kind of superfluous for now because potential adjustments can change things rather significantly. But here's something worth thinking about. PS3 was up 70% YOY in November NPD, 360 was up 20%. And we also know that PS3 is undertracked by about 200k in Aus/NZ since Sony said that Australian NPD had PS3 at 1.4 million a couple months ago. And in regards to the impact of the FFXIII-2 bundle, I don't think anyone expected it to boost PS3 to the same level as the FFXIII bundle did Famitsu are still expecting FFXIII-2 to sell 1 million this year.

Thanks to Sony giving a forecast we can determine everything from that and NPD.

Q4/Q1 expectations

MS are expecting growth in Europe, that's all we know on that front. So we use the 6.3 base figure from last Q4. They've had 400k growth in the US from Oct & Nov. That's 6.7 + whatever growth we see in Dec (which will be crucial). If it's only up the same amount it was from Nov - Dec transition last year, that's 2.2m, up 500k yoy, so 7.2. (again we know MS are expecting growth, that could be as low as 100k though. It could be as high as 3 mill, however, as the DS showed similar growth from Nov's passed - 1.7m Nov to 3m Dec and another similar year before (or after, can't remember)). I think most are expecting around 2.5m though. Which would be 7.5m.

Couldn't even begin to guess the growth in Europe and everywhere else in the world.

Another thing to note is the shortages they had last year, leading them to a much higher Q1 than they expected. Previous Q1's were around the 1.5m mark, this was 2.7, significantly higher. They were probably expecting growth even if they didn't suffer shortages over Q4/Q1, given Kinect/Slim. I don't think anymore than 2.1m though, that's up 600k yoy (over 25%) more than Q4 in % terms. Given they were selling what was put out in Q4 last year, and the stock in Q1 was used to refill the channel (I'd say 500/600k of Q1 was for that purpose) they will be shipping that in Q4 instead this year. We also don't know what potential X360 had to sell last Q4 due to the shortages. Let's say they did ship 600k in Q1 to refill the channels, with the other 2.1m being what they would have shipped anyway. If they had the opportunity to ship that in Q4, it would have been higher than 600k, because demand would have been there Vs. Q1.

Lots of variables to consider, we might see little to no growth in Europe/WW. Smaller than expected growth in NPD Dec 2m~ thus underperforming. Or we might see the opposite.

Regardless, with 400k growth so far, possibly 1.1m~ growth in Dec (max I'd say), growth in Europe, and refilling shelves in Q4 rather than Q1, I do wonder why people don't think it's possible. If all those stars alligned (which is just as likely to happen as it is to not happen) then that suggests a Q over 8.3m~, 800k over PS3's most likely max figure for Q4. (Unless Q1 next year is down YoY).

Now I'm not saying that's how it's gonna pan out, I expect somewhere in the middle, and it wouldn't be unsurprising to see MS falter on their promise. I still expect X360 to be ahead though.

Last Q4 they shipped the same, but the X360 was clearly the more in demand console WW, hence the shortages. Without those it would likely have cleared 7 mill. This Xmas you would expect similar amounts due to the PS3 cut spurring sales. But MS has proven they can be up YoY without a price cut.

You're overlooking the 'slightly ahead' comment. I've said it before and I'll say it again, PS3 will beat it's fiscal target. Sony already rather stupidly underpredicted they're PSP and PS2 target. Both of them will probably reach it with a quarter to spare. Looking at growth in Americas, and as I stated the undertracked AUS/NZ numbers I think 16 million this fiscal year is looking like a pretty distinct possibility. I actually wouldn't be surprised to see PS3 not too far off of 2 million in December NPD. Looking at Nintendo's charts 360 YOY growth in Europe seems rather unlikely, especially after seeing the lackluster effects of the price cuts in Spain and Australia. Unless MS pull some mysterious wild card to make sales exponentially increase in Europe in the last week of the year. And you mentioned MS's expectations for holiday sales last year and in Q1 of this year. Even if there hadn't been shortages in the USA last year it probably would have topped out at about 2 million in December NPD. if 360 is up 20% on that number like they were in November they would still only beat PS3 by about 500k-800k on what I expect PS3 to do in December NPD.