Actually Europe is now a larger market as a whole than the US. More playstation 2s were sold in Europe overall than the US. Playstation is the largest brand currently in Europe.

Soon.

The PS2 was half the price of the PS3 and HDTV penetration is even lower than both the USA and Japan.

The wii will surpass the 360 by Jan 2008. I know my other predictions said sometime in 2008, but seeing MS drop their production and Wii ramping up higher. Oh, yeah Jan 2008 baby.

I think that the long time sales in europe for the PS# will depend a lot on a potentional price drop. We are getting screwed. The only guy I know that had prebooked a PS3 has desided not to buy it. It is simple to expensive (at least in sweden). I can easily see that the first million shipped in march will be sold out, BUT I don't think parents and so on will buy a gaming system for their kids for 1000 USD! A great consol but for a heafty price tag. I do belive that PS2 will continue to sell well during 2007 powered by Guitarr Hero, and a good price point. Nintendo might be doing something right here in EU if the start shipping some ****ing units. The DS has started to build up the Nintendo brand again with over 10 million sold. So dont count EU as sony country yet. About Wii I don't know when it will surpass Xbox360 it depends on the sales in januari. I think we need a 600k + in USA (if the 360 is around 200k) for it to beat the 360 during 2007. I don't think Halo3 will be a great system seller because I belive those that were waiting for Halo3 to jump onto the ship decided to jump onbord when Gears came out.

Microsoft cut production because they wish to sell out all inventory before a price cut. Microsoft has sold roughly 600,000 per month worldwide up until now, and at this continued pace, they will sell through the entire 12,000,000 by the end of June. If Wii sells through every unit they make until June, they will be at 9 million. I personally find it unlikely that Nintendo could pick up 3 million units in 6 months following an XBOX 360 price cut. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A little unfair to call EU the largest gaming market when games ship for different prices, in multiple currencies and languages. Kinda like claiming that Europe is the largest economy in the world......... This is exactly why European launches occur after U.S. and Japanese launches. BUT, for the purpose of this site, more total consoles will be sold in the European continent than any other. The largest gaming markets are 1. United States (we're number 1 until China gets its IP rights under control) 2. Japan (falling, but never below the individual European powers) 3. United Kingdom (well ahead of richer European countries France and Germany) 4. Germany 5. France

Kwaad you may love european games but you know very little about Europe. First Wii Sport is pack-in game here in Europe ( and Australia ). Second in less than one month ( from 8 to 31 december 2006 ) about 700'000 europeans have bought a Wii. Third here in Italy Wii is still soldout in many shops and the Wii fever is strong. European VG market is sure big but it has some features different from American and japanese markets : 1- Europeans are slow to pass from one system to another because of the price ( european prices are higher than japanese's or american's ). 2- If you look at the Britain monthly charts, you could note that most of european gamers are casual gamers. Here in Europe the Videogames' culture is not so spread for various historical reasons. 3- Price tag is very very important for europeans (Xbox1 was launched in 2002 in Europe with a price tag of around 450 euro and nobody bought it). Ah I forgot : european xbox 360 sales are mediocre. Sure, Europe is dominated by PS2 now because Ps2 has a large variety of games and a good price point but you are nut to think that in about one month ( PS3 launch is set for 23 march ) PS3 can sell over 700K units in Europe. In Europe there will be only the 60GB model. Only few Playstation fanatics will buy a PS3 on launch because of the price point. Few europeans could ( and would ) afford to pay 600 euro + other money for cables and games in a non-holiday season. Sure Sony could ship 1 million PS3 in Europe but will sell to customers very few of them. Do you know that the most successful market for Nintendo DS after Japanese market is Europe ? Europe is a casual market so I think that Wii european sales will surprise many gamers ... Also catofollow you are WRONG to say that Japanese market is a declining one because if you look at 2006 result you can see that Japanese market of nowadays is the strongest in japanese history thanks to Nintendo DS and Wii. Your sentence is very ignorant because 2006 is a record year for hardware and software sales in Japan !!! The only thing declining in Japan is the Playstation market !!!

Hey thanks everybody for this nice thread. Also: European advertised prices, unlike US prices, always include VAT, which will be between 15% and 25% depending on the country. The PS3 (60 GB model) will launch in Sweden at SEK 5999 incl. 25% VAT which equals USD 680 net without VAT (not USD 1000!). In the Euro-zone, the Wii (incl. Wii Sports) is offered at EUR 249 incl. VAT which equals between USD 281 and USD 264 net, depending on the country. So the pricing difference is not as big as it may seem at first sight. It's mostly in the range of a 10% uptick on the US price--plus VAT.