Surprise!! PS3 is doing worse in America than it is in Japan.

[Sri Lumpa]

The following source numbers are taken from the CIA world factbook and VGChartz. 

 

Japan has a population 127 millions while the USA has 301 millions people, so for the sales to be the same population wise the USA have to sell 301/127 = 2.37 times more PS3s than Japan. More than that and the PS3 is doing worse in Japan, less than that and the PS3 is doing worse in USA. 

20 may:

USA: 19,539

Japan: 8,376

Ratio: 2.33  PS3 is doing slightly worse in the US but still similar numbers 

13 May:

USA: 21,921

Japan: 9,079

Ratio: 2.41 PS3 is doing slighlt better in the US but still similar numbers

06 May:

USA:25,102

Japan: 15,892

Ratio: 1.579 PS doing much worse in USA than Japan. 

29 April:

USA: 22,148

Japan: 14,010

Ratio: 1.58 PS doing much worse in USA than Japan.

 From this limited data it seems that the US weekly PS3 numbers hold steady at 20-25k while the Japan number went from a steady 10-15k a week (and the PS3 did similar there then than in the US) to a sub-10k a week with the PS3 now doing worse in Japan than in the US.

But two weeks are quickly come and gone so we will have to see if sub-10k is here to stay for PS3 in Japan, or worse, if it will go down and join the 360 numbers. 

 One funny thing is few people except maybe 360 fanboys would have predicted the 360 selling "almost as well" as the PS3 on a weekly basis with less than 10k difference in sales in Japan. Of course they might have preferred if the difference was between 50k 360s to 60k PS3s than 3k 460s to 9k PS3s but I guess you take what you can get.

 

One thing that I wonder is given that most all video game consoles have hardware shortages at launch that subsequently subsides, how many millions consoles are sold before the shortage ends and whether it has any meaning on whether it predicts overall success of a console (i.e. if consoles selling many millions until the shortage finishes are more likely to succeed) because if it does then the Wii is 7+ millions consoles sold before the end of the shortage, which is bloody impressive (I wonder what was the PS2 number).