Damnyouall said:
Could it be that PS3 is Already Ahead of Xbox 360?
While PS3 has been continually outselling Microsoft's Xbox 360 worldwide ever since the price-reduced slim model of PS3 was released in September 2009, so far supposedly 39 Million Xbox 360s have been sold to consumers around the world, versus 34 Million PS3s. But is the userbase of Microsoft's Xbox 360 really larger than that of PS3 or could PS3 possibly be ahead already? There is much evidence in favor of this assumption.
As we know, Microsoft was forced to extend the warranty of Xbox 360 to three years to compensate for the extremely high failure rate, which a recent survey found to be at 42% total. Unfortunately, the survey does not differentiate between early (2005-2008) and later models of Xbox 360, which are apparently much more durable.
So far there have been five major revisions of the 360's hardware. The dreaded "Red Ring of Death" (RRoD) mostly occured in models made before late 2008: Xenon (2005-2006), Zephyr (2006-2007), Opus (2007) and Falcon (2007-2008), with each subsequent revision having lower failure rates. The worst failure rate occured in the first revision (Xenon); quite possibly above 66%. Jasper was introduced in late 2008 / early 2009, and anecdotal evidence points to it having a much more reasonable failure rate; probably well below 10%.
Xenon is now out of warranty: In late 2008, the 3-year warranty ended for those 360s sold in 2005/2006. Most of these did faill at least once during the three year period, and more than half of those that failed, failed more than once. The reason for is is that Microsoft didn't exchange defective Xenons with Falcons or Jaspers but with fixed Xenons. It is therefore safe to assume that many have failed again since the warranty ran out. In 2010, warranty runs out for the Zephyr & Opus revisions. People have said here that CS reps have said that when you send an xbox in for RRoD repairs that they get a new 3 year warranty. Don't just ignore this just because there isn't an official source, especially since your little post here doesn't use much of any official numbers. Double standard much?
To sum it up, from November 2005 until late 2007, rougly 15.8 Million Xbox 360s were sold, which comprise the hardware revisions with the worst failure rates (Xenon, Zephyr, Opus). To make things simple, let's assume 60% of them died (or are eventually going to die) out of warranty = 9.4 Million. Why would we assume that 60% would fail OUT of warranty? Supposedly the older models have an around 60% fail rate, even if that's true, are you trying to suggest that all of them will fail out of warranty and 0% will fail in warranty? Probably the most ridiculous claim in this thread. Even if some fail much much later, I'd assume we'd be in a new generation of consoles anyways It's a given that most people who built up a library of games and play games online with their friends won't simply abandon 360 alltogether just because their out of warranty console fails; they will buy a replacement.
For simplicity's sake, let's assume 3/4 buy a new one, which equals roughly 7 Million. Again, why would we assume this? Why are 3/4 buying new consoles? There are so many other factors and possibilities. Maybe they're buying consoles secondhand (eBay, friends, etc.). Those are not tracked in the 39 million sales. Or maybe they just get it repaired, repair =/= buying a new console. Do you really think 75% would do that? This is almost as ridiculous as the above claim. Now, if we substract this number from the total number of Xbox 360s sold, we arrive at 32 Million. If we only count active 360s, we also have to substract those 2.4 Million failed 360s that were not replaced. And this is probably it, the real install base of Xbox 360: 29.6 Million.
PS3 on the other hand reportedly has a failure rate of 8%; let's assume that 2/3 of the defects occured outside of Sony's 1-year warranty (=5.28%, or 1.79 Million), and that 3/4s of those who encountered a defect eventually bought a new PS3 (=1.34 Million), then we arrive at an install base of 32.21 Million.
Since we don't have precise numbers regarding failure rates, the above figures should be taken with a grain of salt. The only thing in the post that actually shows the poster might have a small amount of logic, why are so many people ignoring this?
However, the conclusion is simple: As of 2010, PS3 most likely has a larger install base than Xbox 360. The poster needs to understand the difference between a conclusion and a hypothesis. Conclusions come are cold hard facts, not guesses and estimates. He has a hypothesis.
Source
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And most importantly, THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE. Why do people keep referring to the source as an article? Heck, if you check the source, as of 11:00 AM EST on 4/22/10, the post has 85 views and 0 replies. And, it's in the off-topic section. I'm not going to make some kind of assumption off of that, but if you think it's important, cool.
Also figured I'd give some headlines of a couple of his other forum posts in the vicinity:
http://2dgaming.site90.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=669 No Buttons, No Go
http://2dgaming.site90.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=643 Eyepet, the Making of a Hit
Granted, he runs the forum, but still, bias much?
Most of us (I think) fighting this post are NOT saying it's completely impossible that the difference in install base is less than 5 million, we're just saying this post is ridiculous and can't be taken seriously. The only ounce of logic in the post is when he admits that the figures "should be taken with a grain of salt"
Again, this is NOT an article, I'm going to quote and say that to each and every person who calls it an article from now on.
Now, here's a list of factors that can have an influence on user base, some of you may be surprised by how many are unaccounted for:
Number of consoles sold: accounted for
Number of "extra" consoles owned (1 owner and/or household, multiple of the same console): unknown (also includes when a console breaks and someone just buys a new one. That part may or may not affect the user base due to the last part of the first factor in the red part)
Number of people who actually buy games for 1 console: unknown (my sister used to buy 360 games before I moved out, now my roommate does. Not really all that important in this discussion but it has an affect on user base)
Number of consoles broken and not replaced: unknown
Number of consoles replaced second-hand: unknown (the seller is effectively removed from the userbase while the buyer is maintained as a part of the user base. BUT this does not affect retail sales, even if it's sold refurbished. If it did, each second-hand bought console would affect the user base by 2 (+1 to consoles sold with a -1 to userbase = -2 to userbase) instead of only affecting it by 1, assuming that only 1 person buys games for the product.)
And some factors that may or may not affect user base:
Number of refurbished/second-hand consoles bought by new customer: unknown (similar to the point right above, but this facet has no affect on user base since the seller is removed from the user base, and the new buyer is added. Consoles sold changes by 0, and user base changes by 0) Also, a tricky issue is if someone's console breaks, and they buy a new one, then sell the old one to gamestop who then refurbishes it and sells it to a new customer. This turns into a net +1 to console sales and +1 to user base.
Number of consoles repaired if broken: unknown (please note, consoles repaired in or out of warranty =/= a new console sold at retail)
Number of banned consoles: unknown, no effect (you can still play games on a banned console)
As an aside, Actual true failure rate of systems: unknown (surveys are a good way to know, but only the console manufacturer has a true idea of how many systems fail, so the number could be much lower than we think, or much higher than we think. May or may not have an affect, no way to determine).
I'm sure I missed some for both lists but to any logical person, the point is there. There are SO many unknowns, there is no reliable way to determine really much of anything. You can make assumptions all you want, but that's all they are, assumptions. While this forum seems to have an unspoken rule that assumptions can equal fact, that's not the case in the real world.
