Yeah, I should have mentioned that in my post. I was trying to come up with a solution for this but I wanted to have it all in one single graph so I assumed most people would notice that by themselves seeing how big the PS3 shipment number for the first fiscal year is compared to PS1 and PS2.

Might want to go ahead and include a asterisk or something because I've had this debate as recenty as last Friday with people that didn't know about this and they were linking from a story from a well known PS3 site (ps3center I think) as their proof.

Good charts, just makes sure people understand the differences between them.

Allright then, I edited the OP. To determine whether the PS3 has a shot at selling 100m units would be way easier if we knew the PS3's peak year. If shipments peak in FY 2010 the chance is pretty much zero. If sales peak in FY 2011 it could still do it if it shows small enough yearly declines as the PS1 dropped pretty fast after Fiscal year 6.

It is also possible the PS3's peak year happens after FY2011, personally I think that's likely.

@ MikeB

So do you expect a 3rd place console to peak in sales in it's 6th year on the market.


That's not likely.

That's rather unlikely in my opinion. Sales peaking after more than 4 years on the market is unprecedented. Maybe if they drop the price to 200$ in 2011 but they could just as well drop the price this year (to 250$ or so, which would result in higher 2010 sales and lower 2011 sales, relatively speaking), who knows? In my eyes this is only possible if a) SONY doesn't drop the price this year but drops it a whopping 100$ in 2011 b) No new console or handheld is announced (a "PS3 Portable" if you will) c) Microsoft and Nintendo concentrate on profit instead of market share (imagine a huge marketing push for Natal, including price drops and all) and d) SONY is able to keep the PS3 hot until the beginning of 2012.

A peak in 2011 would also imply more than 15 million PS3 sold during a single year (think of a sales pattern like 13m for FY 2010, 14m for FY 2011 and 15m FY 2012) and I'm not sure if the market is big enough for two consoles selling beyond 15m units a year, especially considering a peak in FY 2012 requires FY 2011 sales to be up from FY 2010 sales: A sales pattern like 13m, 12m, 15m looks rather unlikey as it would be hard to get sales up again after they dropped once (and to have sales up yoy in FY 2011 they'd most likely have to drop the price, so the room for price drops would get smaller)

You do these are Shipped to retailers, not sold to customers right?

@ Garnett

So what?

Right. VGChartz doesn't have worldwide PS1 sales data (I think. Feel free to prove me wrong, though) and comparing PS1 shipments vs PS3 sales numbers wouldn't be fair as obviously that would make PS1 sales seem higher than they truly are.

So yes, everything is shipped.

One other thing to remember is that prior to April 1, 2007, Sony reported their shipped numbers as units manufactured. As of that date they began using the industry standard method of reporting units sold to retail/distributors.

This means that all of the PS and the PS2/PS3 before that data (making it the first PS3 FY) were manufactured units, not shipped.

Quite the confusing scenario when you try to take all the nuances into account.

That shift in 2007 is also when both Sony and MS stopped reporting quarterly shipments to each of the 3 main territories (Japan, Europe and America). VGC used to have a nice chart that broke down all those shipments but when MS and Sony stopped providing the numbers, they took down the chart.