Reeves: PS3 will overtake 360 by summer

A million PS3s sold in PAL region in December; Gap closing quickly on 360

PlayStation 3 is set to overtake Xbox 360 in Europe by the summer of this year, despite launching well over a year after its rival.

That was the bullish claim of SCEE president and CEO David Reeves this week, who revealed that PS3 has already outsold 360 in certain territories such as France, Spain, Germany and Italy.

In an exclusive interview, Reeves told MCV that in December PS3, PSP and PS2 all sold over a million units each in the PAL region.

And although Sony Corporation is yet to announce full global sales figures, Reeves provided a snapshot of PS3’s PAL performance so far, whilst predicting the leap ahead of Xbox 360 within the next few months.

“In December we sold just over a million PlayStation 3s during the month,” he told MCV. “That’s across all PAL territories and that’s a sell-through figure.

 

 

About 20-22 per cent of that figure was sold in the UK alone. We’re very happy with the performance of PS3 in the UK.

“We don’t often mention the competition, but I will give you some interesting data: In terms of installed base in some of our major markets, such as France, Spain, Germany and Italy – plus some distributor territories in smaller markets like Switzerland – our current cumulative installed base is now higher than Xbox 360.

“It has not yet reached that in the UK. But the team here expect to overtake the installed base of Xbox 360 across all PAL territories in late summer. It’s also worth mentioning that last week we outsold Xbox 360 in PAL territories by a ratio of three to one.”

Link

Not a major surprise that PS3 has overtaken 360 in the countries he mentions, as we've seen figures from elsewhere for those. According to him PS3 sold over 200K in UK in December, which we didn't know. Big surprise is last week outselling 360 3-1.

Whether or not they catch 360 in PAL total by late summer remains to be seen, I doubt they'll outsell 360 3-1 every week.

yea vgchartz data doesn't show this at all, 3-1???

Excellent to see Sony confirm this.

Portugal, Benelux, New Zealand, Norway, Austria, various East European countries are some other PAL regions the PS3 is selling very well compared to the 360.

It's basically the UK and Australia where they have to focuss on to make this PAL victory complete, personally I believe this will happen with the arrival of the big PS3 exclusive blockbusters titles like Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, Final Fantasy XIII and probably Getaway 3 and Motorstorm 2. This shouldn't be much of a problem for them.

johnsobas said: yea vgchartz data doesn't show this at all, 3-1???

VGChartz IMO needs to update some of their estimates, at least with regard to France and Italy considering GfK data (as well as for North America considering NPD data).

Good news. And by the tracking of Vgchartz it seems quite likely that the PS3 will surpass the 360 on European ground.

I have to say I'm impressed with the accuracy of hardware today. DS and Wii were very close, and now PS3 is spot on for PAL and UK.

VGC
Console PS3
Total Others

1,082,486 Vs "just over a million"

VGC
Console PS3
UK

220,623 Vs "About 20-22 per cent of that figure was sold in the UK in December"

Sony when talking about installbase usually uses GfK figures, with regard to this 3:1 statement I think its more likely VGChartz overtracked the 360 than severely undertracking the PS3.

It will be a combination of Chart-Track and GfK when talking about sell-through and comparing to other manufacturer's consoles.

This is very interesting data and paints a much better picture of how all the PAL regions are doing. I'm just so surprised how high the sales were in the UK for the month of December.