RolStoppable said:
That's incorrect. The PS2 was selling big numbers right from the start. The numbers you posted are shipments for the fiscal year ending March 2000 and the fiscal year ending March 2001. Since the PS2 launched in March 2000, the 1.41m figure constitutes shipments for only one month of availability and therefore the figure for 2001 brings the total to 13 months. Scaled to 12 months and sell-through instead of shipments, the PS2 did ~9m. One caveat here is that the PS2 was Japan-only in its first six months, so a regional alignment of launches would push the PS2 in the range of 15-15.5m. The other caveat is that such an adjustment to the comparison gives the PS2 a notable advantage because it is granted a much bigger timeframe to sort out its supply shortages. That's why overall it's the fairer comparison to take the first day of availability and count 12 months from that point, but it's clear that no kind of comparison will be absolutely equal due to the launch timings that differ for all consoles. Regional alignment would increase the numbers of all other consoles too, not just the PS2. The only exception is Switch which launched day and date worldwide. An additonal problem with PS2 comparisons is that VGC was only founded in 2006 and weekly sales tracking only applies to consoles from the Nintendo DS forward, so there are huge holes in the historical database that will never be filled. The GBA is another fast-selling system that pushed ~15m in its first 12 months with regional alignment of launches; it may actually have done even better than the PS2. |
I see, sorry. All of that information was actually on the site I got the numbers from, but I got confused with the dates.
