Kaz Hirai, chief executive of Sony’s PlayStation games console business, has set an ambitious target of reaching nearly 150m in sales for its slow-starting PlayStation 3 console.
Sony told those attending the video game industry’s E3 convention last week that sales of its original PlayStation, launched in 1994, had reached 102m units and the PlayStation 2 console had now passed 140m worldwide in its ninth year on sale.
Steering Sony’s loss-making games unit into profitability is Mr Hirai’s most pressing task. The massive costs of investing in the games console, which is equipped with a Blu-ray player and the powerful “Cell” chip, means that Sony is still incurring a loss on every PS3 sold.
Mr Hirai, in a Financial Times interview, said his aim was for the PS3 to surpass sales of the PS2 over a similar time period.
“It’s not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers. I’ve seen that movie already,” he said.
“I want to try to see if we can exceed the PS2 numbers after nine years, otherwise why are we in this business?”
Twenty months after the PS3’s release, the console is barely 10 per cent towards his target. Sales to the end of Sony’s fiscal year in March were 12.85m and it expects to sell another 10m in the current fiscal year.
The PS3 has trailed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii in sales. PS3 sales have picked up this year and it outsold the 360 in the US in June by nearly two-to-one, helped by the release of its exclusive title, Metal Gear Solid 4.
Peter Moore, who headed Microsoft’s Xbox business until joining Electronic Arts a year ago, said that while Nintendo and now Microsoft are profitable, and Sony is catching up, the Wii is winning the console wars.
“It looks to me as if the Wii is going to have at least half the installed base of the overall industry and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are going to fight over the balance, based on the run-rates we’re seeing,” he told the FT.
Michael Pachter, video games analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, said he expected PS3 sales would accelerate if Sony could cut the price significantly from the current $400.
“It’s highly likely that when the PS3 gets below $200, it will sell as well as the PS2.”
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