From next-gen.biz (read the whole thing)
As expected, holiday shopping has pushed sales higher. Historically November sales are around 2.5 times what they are in October and it is instructive to apply that rule of thumb here.
Had PlayStation 3 sales performed according to this rule, the October rate would have led one to expect 75,600 systems per week in November. Clearly, Sony bested that rate by over 40,000 systems per week, most likely on the strength of its $400 model introduced on 2 November 2007. Even so, Sony is under pressure to further close the gap between its sales rate and that of the competition.
For its part Microsoft's November sales were a factor of 2.1 times larger than October sales. Even so, Microsoft sales were up a robust 50% from the same period in 2006 and the Xbox 360 widened its lead over the PlayStation 3. With a strong slate of software and prices that put it squarely between its competitors, consumers are clearly finding it to be an attractive system.
The Wii didn't even come close to the historical holiday sales ramp: its November sales were only 1.9 times its October sales. That only serves to enhance Nintendo's achievement, since in absolute terms the Wii outsold the Xbox 360 by over 200,000 systems and the PlayStation 3 by over half a million systems.
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To the extent that Sony is still losing ground to both the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, the higher sales were not enough. In the sense that Sony has to get traction somewhere, the sales were encouraging. Provided that the introduction of the 40Gb PS3 at $400 leads to higher, sustained PlayStation 3 sales, November could be viewed as the beginning of a new age for the PlayStation 3 – a relaunch, so to speak. As noted in prior months, however, the holiday season will make it more difficult to discern the actual effect on baseline PlayStation 3 sales until at least February 2008.
If we believe the rule of thumb that sales increase by a factor of about 2.5 from October to November, then we can say that Sony's price drop increased its sales rate by about 40,000 systems per week or a bit more than 50%.
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Had Microsoft cut its hardware price earlier than August 2007, it might stayed further ahead. Consider the first two years of monthly sales for the Xbox 360:
In particular, compare the blue bars (the first year of Xbox 360 sales, starting in November 2005) to the green bars (the second year). Notice that in the January to July period the Xbox 360 sold better during its first year than during its second! This is particularly striking given that Xbox 360 supply was severely constrained during January to March of that first year.
Sales began to improve dramatically only when the price dropped in August of the second year. It is interesting to speculate why Microsoft resisted an earlier price drop.
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Despite these caveats, Xbox 360 software is selling exceptionally well. Microsoft claims an attach rate of 6.9 games. That is, nearly 7 games have been sold for every Xbox 360 system. (This rate takes into account sales since the system launched – it is not an annual rate.) Given the abundance of third-party software on the Xbox 360 and reports that the system is relatively developer-friendly, publishers and developers have to be pleased with the platform.
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On the software side, the twin PlayStation 3 successes of Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed are heartening. However, Sony's own first-party software appears to be struggling, and the results are extremely disappointing given the size of the investments.
The chart above shows the LTD sales for four of Sony's big new properties, all developed exclusively for the PlayStation 3: Resistance: Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, LAIR, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Together, sales don't total even a million software units. If Sony were gambling that original first-party software would help sell its system during its inaugural year, it appears to have lost resoundingly. Even Sony's big sequel to a successful PlayStation 2 franchise, Ratchet & Clank Future, has sold fewer than 150,000 units so far.
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Three big third-party games were released this month on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3: Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed, and Rock Band. To compare them, we should first observe that there are around 3.22 Xbox 360 owners for every 1 PlayStation 3 owner. If those populations are buying software at the same rate, we can expect that the Xbox 360 version of a cross-platform game will sell just over 3 times the number of units as the same game on the PlayStation 3. Now, here are the ratios of Xbox 360 sales to PlayStation 3 sales for those three big third-party games.
At a ratio of 3.53 Xbox 360 units for every PlayStation 3 unit, Call of Duty 4 it closest to the 3.22 hardware ratio of the two platforms. On the other hand, the Assassin's Creed ratio is significantly lower than 3.22 – that means that PlayStation 3 owners showed greater interest in that title than did their Xbox 360 counterparts. Rock Band was clearly more popular on the Xbox 360 than it was on the PlayStation 3.
These ratios shed a little light on the buying habits of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners, but they do obscure the absolute figures. Keep in mind that the 3.53 ratio for Call of Duty 4 means that the Xbox 360 version sold more than 3.5 times the number of units that the PlayStation 3 version did. While a publisher like Activision is no doubt interested in the fact that PlayStation 3 owners are buying its software at rates comparable to Xbox 360 owners, they're even more interested in Sony increasing the population of PlayStation 3 owners.
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Surprisingly, Guitar Hero III sales were flat month-on-month only on the Xbox 360. (The actual change was down by about 3% from October.) On every other platform, sales increased measurably: up 20% on the PlayStation 3, 50% on the Wii, and 90% on the PlayStation 2.
On each of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, 1 in every 10 owners has purchased Guitar Hero III. By comparison, around 1 in every 8.5 Wii owners have purchased Guitar Hero III, making it the single best-selling third-party title on that platform.
We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai
It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps
We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick
