Just a note before I start this article, the US numbers for the PS3 are estimates, as we haven’t gotten any hard numbers for it, but they shouldn’t be that far off. I will update them when we get the full picture from NPD.
With NPD totals, VGC has the 360 overtracked by 1.26M in the US (the 360‘s best market). We also have the PS3 overtracked by ~330K (US is a pretty good market for the PS3, but definitely not its best). This puts the new gap, with the recent adjustments, to ~990K in favor of the PS3. However, MS (or more specifically Steve Ballmer) stated they were #1 in HW sales for 2011 at CES. I think we have one of three possibilities here.
1. The PS3 is INCREDIBLY overtracked in EU and/or the 360 is INCREDIBLY undertracked there. In my opinion this is unlikely because EU is, for the most part, “PS country.” It’s also up ~8.5% YOY in Japan, another good region for it. So I think it would be hard for it to be so overtracked in EU, when we have it relatively flat in one of its best regions (its actually down ~0.2%). The 360 is down, as well, but by ~6.4%. So I think the best the 360 could do is be down by the same amount as the PS3 (again, this is basically “PS country”). This would make it undertracked by ~73K, which is still not enough to overcome the gap.
2. Steve got excited, and in announcing the 66+ million sold, he was including shipments from the first couple of weeks in January. This is definitely a possibility, however, I think the more likely possibility is…
3. MS decided to change the criteria for selling #1 WW. If you remember, around the time they first made the claim, they also clarified that they meant actual retail sales and not shipment numbers. I think they may have changed it from being about retail sales to shipment numbers, without really saying anything about it. This most likely meant selling consoles to retailers at the same price that they would be when MS drops the price of the 360 this year (so 250GB SKUs for less than $199). This also means that MS will have an extremely small shipment for Q1 2012.
So, for right now and in terms of retail sales, it looks like the PS3 did keep a gap of ~990K above the 360 this year. However, 360 may lay claim to the shipment war. Of course, we’ll have to wait til shipment numbers from MS and Sony to begin to get the full picture. Unfortunately, we may even have to wait til shipment numbers for Q1 2012 til it is 100% confirmed.
