Slimebeast said:
VGC has 575,000 for PS3 in "Other Europe". Let's say half of those are sales in Benelux since that fits with the number in the article. Benelux has a pop of 27 million. Since ioi implied it above we can remove Portugal from your PS3-strong market list (incl in Spain sales). Ireland + Austria + Switz has pop 20 mill so it's unlikey that more than 200,000 PS3s sold there. That leaves almost 100,000 PS3s for the rest - Greece at pop 11 mill + a bunch of Eastern European countries at 330 mill. Not so long ago in a thread about Eastern European console sales, we could see that Next-gen console lifetime sales are very small in Poland (pop 38 mill) and Russia (pop 141 mill) - roughly 25K each. So in conclusion, it all adds up well.
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Some of these are shipped, but there shouldn't be a major difference between shipped and sold by now, maybe 10% or less.
Ireland: 110,000 Mid-April 2008 (Sony)
Russia: 60,000 Mid-April 2008 (Sony)
Poland: 20,000+ through 2007: Forecast 30,000 through Q1 2008 (Sony)
No recent numbers for Switzerland or Austria, but at launch 14,000 were sold in Switzerland and 8,000 in Austria, compared to 54,500 in Germany. Switzerland was around 1/4 of German sales, and Austria was around 1/7. Combined Switzerland & Austria were around 40% of German PS3 launch sales. Through November 2007 34,000 had been sold in Austria. German sales through November aren't available, but were available through October and December, from this I estimate November sales to be in the region 220,000, which would keep Austria close to the original 1/7 ratio compared to Germany. I think estimating Austria/Switzerland PS3 sales at 40% of German PS3 sales should end up with a decent ballpark estimate for those countries.
The other Eastern European countries where PS3 has been released (Romania, Czech Republic: Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia) have a combined population about 50% larger than Poland, with a roughly comparable GDP per capita. I wouldn't expect PS3 sales in these countries combined to be significantly more than 50% higher than Polish sales.
That leaves Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. The latter two have combined populations of less than 1m, so don't add any significant sales. The former two are tricky, but Greece has a similar population and GDP to Portugal, through Q3 2007 PS3 was at 30,000 in Portugal and forecast by Sony to sell 100,000 by the end of the financial year. About the same time PS3 was estimated to be around 20,000 in Greece. I have no data for Turkey at all, but despite a large population, GDP per capita is very low, I'd expect sales to be less than Greece.
Anyway, from this I would very roughly guestimate:
Benelux: 300,000
Austria/Switzerland: 180,000
Eastern Europe: 130,000
Ireland: 110,000
Greece/Turkey: 80,000
Excluding Ireland, the lower down the list you go the bigger the guessing gets, so they could be quite a way out, especially Greece/Turkey, but I think Austria/Switzerland, and Eastern Europe should be in the ballpark.
I don't feel that PS3 is undertracked in Europe as a whole, but it's possibly overtracked in some of the larger markets, and undertracked in "Other Europe". Many of these countries don't even have sales trackers, so it's basically impossible to track some of these countries accurately.
