Vita Sales outside of Japan

[Chark]

RolStoppable said:

Chark said:
I'm not an analyst, but I like to speculate. I'm sure plenty of you have more knowledge and can fill in some info, but let's see if this makes some sense.

Nintendo typically sells handhelds 2 to 1 over Sony, so 66% and 33% market share respectfully. The DS sold 160mil while the PSP sold 80mil, something close to that right? Looking at sales this week or so of the 3DS and the Vita, we can see around the same thing. Handheld sales aren't dropping much anymore, we still have spring and summer to see what happens but we can expect fall and winter sales to be up over current. Now, 3DS sold something like 16mil in its first year out, so Sony's handheld should sell half that its first year judging by market share trend. I know share fluctuates but for this purpose, allow it. So Sony should sell 8mil Vitas by the end of the year. That's an average of over 150,000 a week WW. Right now their average is around 145,000 a week WW. (Ignore that I added the first week in Japan, it's also included launch sales so the fact its under my calculated what should be expected goal don't attack it, civility please.) the Vita sales aren't stellar right now, but they are probably on the bottom end of sales for the next few months. -60,000 a week is going to be hard to make up for later this year, but we know what fall and winter bring to sales numbers and if it's proportionate to what the 3DS saw in growth we can expect a couple months or so of 2 to 4 times the sales of what we see now. So if Vita sells 200k to 400k for a length of time during the holiday season they will be on track market share wise to the previous generation against Nintendo. Of course it could be poised to sell even more since that mark isn't the hardest thing to achieve. It's an opportunity for Sony to grab substantial market share from Nintendo if they don't pull off what they did last year because 3DS sales are low now too. The 3DS is already positioned to sell over 10 million without a significant holiday boost but if they can't double over the Vita, Sony will have more market share in the handheld industry than they might have had ever. And Vita sales could rocket up considering Japan's sales can't really go anywhere but up. This year could be a solid year for handheld competition.

Needs more paragraphs, but I read it anyway.

Firstly, the DS and PSP sold on about the same level in their initial year, so Sony's market share has been much higher than 33 % at one point. In fact, the PSP was even outpacing the DS in America and Europe if a true launch aligned comparison was made. (DS launched in Nov 04/Dec 04/Mar 05 in Japan/America/Europe while PSP launched in Dec 04/Apr 05/Sep 05.)

Secondly, if we assume a tie for 3DS and PSV sales in 2012 (let's say 10m for both), Nintendo would still hold more than 66 % in market share as it would be something like 25m vs. 10m in total due to the 3DS's headstart.

Thirdly, the 3DS is supposed to get the mother of all killer apps this year (Super Mario Bros.), so anything below 18m units in hardware sales for 2012 seems to be unrealistic.

Fourthly, the PSV has only been four weeks on the market in America and Europe, so it hasn't necessarily bottomed out yet. It's perfectly possible that the 3DS will outsell the PSV 3:1 on a weekly basis through spring and summer.

Fifthly, the 3DS has a better release schedule than the PSV in the next few months, so there's a good chance that 3DS sales will get a little bump every now and then. For example, Kingdom Hearts 3D will release in a few days in Japan, along with a special edition 3DS.

Yeah sorry about the lack of paragraphs, I was using my iPod earlier. Again, I'm not great at analyzing, and I've only been following sales here for less than a year.

Anyway, great first point about the market share with the PSP, but you kind of contridict it in the second point when you talk about having market shares be considered the average of the total, which is what I was basing my market share comparison of 66% to 33% on. I don't doubt the 3DS is in for a much bigger year than 10mil, can't say the same exactly for the Vita, but I hope so. 10 mil would be a nice first year for it especially going up after that lofty 16 mil the 3ds had. I know the Vita could still drop down, but I'm not sure if it will go that far down unless the whole market does and even if it does it might still have a good year since a drop now can't be that devistating when its selling less than 100k, especially if holidays are nice.