Which is basically another way of saying the PS3 third party game sales are doing poorly ...

The problem isn't game quality it is that the PS3 is too expensive for most people to pick it up to play Virtual Fighter 5 or Ridge Racer 6; the fans of these series are most likely going to wait or buy another system then to spend $500 on a PS3 which only will hurt the PS3 in the long run.

Those sales are not to bad. Resistance is showing some really good legs. The question I have for it is whether it keeps on selling when Warhawk, Lair and Heavenly Sword are released.

The Japan sales are not good, it seems that they have only 1 million consoles collecting dust or playing PS2 games which is very unfortunate. I am also interested to see how Heavenly Sword goes in Japan, hopefully it can gather some decent sales in all regions to warrant the excessive hype put into the game.

these sales aren't great, but at least they are improving

Concerning Christmas sales in the future I think that the Wii will, of course, dominate but to a lesser degree than it has been for the following:


-Christmas is one of those times of the year that people are willing to spend a little bit more which can't hurt the PS3 as well as the 360. The PS3's higher price point is cost-prohibitive for a lot of gamers right now, but this will be to a slightly lesser degree during the holidays.

-The wii shortage issue. Nintendo has said repeatedly that there will be a shortage of wii's this christmas. Although this will help the DS and PSP more, it will help the 360 and PS3 as well.

-PS3's Home/VOD/better games

-this assumes that Sony will run out of 60g PS3's and then go ahead and drop the price of the 80g model to $500 as expected


I predict that the Wii's edge in sales numbers will drop slightly this christmas from what sales have been for the Wii compared to the PS3. The wii has been selling about 2 hardware units for every PS3 sold, and I think that the ratio will drop to about 1.7 for the holidays meaning that while the wii will still dominate, it won't dominate as strongly as it has been.  After christmas is over in jan, I think that we would probably see more of the usual, the wii will probably sell 2 hardware units for every 1 PS3 sold.

Here's a question about the motorstorm pack-in:

Was it to be literally packed in (like wii sports) or was it to arrive in it's own case and then given away with the purchase? As dumb as this may sound, I have a reason for asking. Just before the price drop, I had three copies of motorstorm show up in the mail that were labeled not for resale. It also included a note on the front case saying that the firmware on the disc needed to be installed to get the full Blu-ray function, or something like that. Otherwise it looked like an average Ps3 game, in a sealed game case. No one at work had a clue as to what they were. I haven't seen them since.

I would assume that the Motorstorm copies are the same way Xbox pack-ins are treated:

A litteral copy (case and all) is inserted in the 80gb packs, unlike Wii Sports where it's just a disk.

Then why did they get shipped by itself? We haven't got a single 80 gig yet as far as I know, but three of the pack-in style motorstorms showed up. Sorry for the blank post, i am up past my bedtime. I work odd hours.

Nice analysis.

Is Wii Sports really just a disk in the US? We get it in a case with everything else (even a Pin for Nintendos official website).

I don´t think the PS3 sales are bad, at least not in terms of software. The software sells strong, keep in mind only 4 million consoles are sold and the games show some legs. What hurts the PS3 is it´s price. It sells decent in the US now, despite still beeing expensive.

the motorstorm bundle is gonna end up taking away sales of other games naturally like wii sports does with other games. I always thought this was a problem when sega would include like 6 games with the purchase of a system. Sure it increases value, but naturally software sales will go down, and 3rd parties especially aren't gonna like that.