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Forums - Sales Discussion - When does Sony reach the point of no return in Japan?

Hus said: sorry no. not even 5 months after release, PS3 is hitting 3 million. neither predecessor did that so fast.
After 20 Weeks in the PS2 had sold 2,530,500 In Japan ... So basically, the PS3's worldwide sales are almost matched by the sales of the PS2 in one region ...



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Christopher_G2 said: No one should count the PS3 until we see how it performs in 2008. Gran Turismo 5 and expecially Final Fantasy XIII (which will remain exclusive in spite of silly fanboy rumors) will be big system sellers in Japan. Will they be big enough to make this a two-way horse race between the Wii and PS3? Well possibly if they're coupled with price cuts. Japan loves inovation but they also love great technology as well. And please don't reply about how the PSP with better technology is getting it's ass handed to it by the DS. The portable market and the console market are two totally different animals. All in all I never expect the Wii to touch the success of the DS in Japan, and do expect the PS3 to suprass sales of the PSP.
Nintendo fans thought that the Gamecube could open up a can of whoop-ass on the PS2 with Super Mario Sunshine, Resident Evil, and Metriod Prime in 2002 ... One thing that every console war has demonstrated is that it is easy to maintain momentium but very difficult to get it; if the PS3 behaves like most consoles in history 2007 will be (one of) its biggest year. If the PS3 doesn't sell well, expect third parties to switch resources away from the PS3 as projects are completed, and for the resources from PS2 projects to not be devoted to the PS3.



HappySqurriel said: Christopher_G2 said: No one should count the PS3 until we see how it performs in 2008. Gran Turismo 5 and expecially Final Fantasy XIII (which will remain exclusive in spite of silly fanboy rumors) will be big system sellers in Japan. Will they be big enough to make this a two-way horse race between the Wii and PS3? Well possibly if they're coupled with price cuts. Japan loves inovation but they also love great technology as well. And please don't reply about how the PSP with better technology is getting it's ass handed to it by the DS. The portable market and the console market are two totally different animals. All in all I never expect the Wii to touch the success of the DS in Japan, and do expect the PS3 to suprass sales of the PSP. Nintendo fans thought that the Gamecube could open up a can of whoop-ass on the PS2 with Super Mario Sunshine, Resident Evil, and Metriod Prime in 2002 ... One thing that every console war has demonstrated is that it is easy to maintain momentium but very difficult to get it; if the PS3 behaves like most consoles in history 2007 will be (one of) its biggest year. If the PS3 doesn't sell well, expect third parties to switch resources away from the PS3 as projects are completed, and for the resources from PS2 projects to not be devoted to the PS3.
Well thats what you would like .But seeing how third party software is selling in the Wii I dont see anyone switching resources to the Wii anytime soon .Wii suffers a certain risk ,it is headed for the casual market but that market is progressively seeing the machine as a one trick pony with Wii Sports and Wii Play .The console and those two games sell a lot (Wii Sports only in Japan though ,despite vgcharts putting it in the charts it comes bundled and shouldnt be considered as sales or it will end up being the most sold game ever ) but thats about it .Playstation 3 is not doing good numbers ,but it hasnt even started its progression .The only game who could attract some sales as Gundam Mussou did so and it has already had 2 number one in Japan



Diomedes1976 said: Well thats what you would like .But seeing how third party software is selling in the Wii I dont see anyone switching resources to the Wii anytime soon .Wii suffers a certain risk ,it is headed for the casual market but that market is progressively seeing the machine as a one trick pony with Wii Sports and Wii Play .The console and those two games sell a lot (Wii Sports only in Japan though ,despite vgcharts putting it in the charts it comes bundled and shouldnt be considered as sales or it will end up being the most sold game ever ) but thats about it .Playstation 3 is not doing good numbers ,but it hasnt even started its progression .The only game who could attract some sales as Gundam Mussou did so and it has already had 2 number one in Japan
Well, I wouldn't judge third party software sales based on the Japaneese market because in the top 50 last week 38 were on the DS, 5 were for the Wii, 4 were for the PS2, and the PS3, PSP and XBox 360 each had 1 game; also note that 51% of all software sold was for the Nintendo DS. In general, you could say that currently if software isn't on the Nintendo DS it is not selling particularly well (regardless of whether it is first or third party). Now, much like the DS, if the Wii gets a strong lead in Japan it will attract third party developers simply because your odds of selling enough units to break even (say 250,000) go up dramatically when you're on a platform which has 5 Million units in each region as compared to 5 million units worldwide.



Diomedes...your logic is very poor. History has proven many times that mice will always go to the cheese. Mice = 3rd parties, cheese = largest user base. N64 had huge build up. Lots of new games for solid franchises. What happened. System too expensive to make games for along with Nintendo's big ass head. PS1 got a head start and kept going as 3rd parties threw all of their games to it. Same here. If PS3 doesn't start match Wii's sales in at least one region soon, they will lose all 3rd party exclusives. Games that are HD and far along in dev will be ported to 360, games that are japan centric will be dropped and sent to Wii. FF13 will be sent to Wii if PS3 keeps this sales pace. I am betting we will hear this by August.



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Has any console in the history of consoles ever sold poorly, or at least on the weak side, then came out strong after? ps3 has alot of potential and has alot of possibilities for the future, but I can't shake the idea that once a console or really any product is established as being not good, or weak, or simply unsuccessful it's impossible to revive. I tend to get the impression that once the masses get something in their head it's almost impossilbe to get out.



fooflexible said: Has any console in the history of consoles ever sold poorly, or at least on the weak side, then came out strong after? ps3 has alot of potential and has alot of possibilities for the future, but I can't shake the idea that once a console or really any product is established as being not good, or weak, or simply unsuccessful it's impossible to revive. I tend to get the impression that once the masses get something in their head it's almost impossilbe to get out.
The only console I can think of that was highly successful after starting out slowly was the original Playstation; I suspect the only reason the Playstation even survived was because of how poorly the Saturn performed and the time difference between when the Playstation and N64 were released.



I know there's little point to responding to the claim that the Wii is a fad. It's simply what Sony fanboys rationalize the stunning change of fortunes in the video game industy as they cry themselves to sleep every night. Nevertheless, I'll expand on something mentioned somewhere on this thread, while games can be a fad the system is not (unless it only supports one type of game or something like that). Generally speaking a system needs a "fad" game at or near launch. Why else are non fanboys going to shell out twice what they will pay 2 years later for a system with only a few games? You need a game that people want to play like crazy for 2-12 months until more games come out because otherwise they won't be playing or buying your system. That being said, is Wii Sports a fad? Most certainly. I managed to get a Wii a couple months ago to play Wii Sports. I still play it though not as much and a month from now I'll be playing only occasionally. That's fine because I'll be playing Super Paper Mario then anyways. After that there's Heatseeker, maybe Godfather, MySims (all 3rd party BTW) as I await Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and Animal Crossing. Similarly, I bought an Xbox to play Halo. I played it for about 6 months until I got KotOR and I haven't played it since. Of course Halo 2 is a big reason why but that's the point. By the time I want to play a Wii Sports type game again I'll have Mario vs Sonic, various in depth tennis, golf (already have that one), bowling, and boxing games from which to choose. Also, a quick point that can be found on other threads, but PSP/PS3 games cost more to develop than DS/Wii ones. Twice as much seems to be the consensus, though the do sell for 20% more. Ignoring what effect higher game prices will have on longer-term sales that means that Sony 3rd party games have to sell 67% more than Nintendo ones. In general then if a PS3 game needs 500,000 sales to break even (or nearly 60% of PS3 owners in Japan at this point), a Wii one would only need 300,000 (15% of Wii owners). Devs care about profit more than user base or units sold which helps explain why they would go to the Wii and DS even if they would sell less than on the PS3 and PSP.



HappySqurriel said: fooflexible said: Has any console in the history of consoles ever sold poorly, or at least on the weak side, then came out strong after? ps3 has alot of potential and has alot of possibilities for the future, but I can't shake the idea that once a console or really any product is established as being not good, or weak, or simply unsuccessful it's impossible to revive. I tend to get the impression that once the masses get something in their head it's almost impossilbe to get out. The only console I can think of that was highly successful after starting out slowly was the original Playstation; I suspect the only reason the Playstation even survived was because of how poorly the Saturn performed and the time difference between when the Playstation and N64 were released.
Sony was also new to the video game market, launched with Sega too early in the console cycle, and had the then king of video games about to launch just over a year later.



albionus said: I know there's little point to responding to the claim that the Wii is a fad. It's simply what Sony fanboys rationalize the stunning change of fortunes in the video game industy as they cry themselves to sleep every night. Nevertheless, I'll expand on something mentioned somewhere on this thread, while games can be a fad the system is not (unless it only supports one type of game or something like that). Generally speaking a system needs a "fad" game at or near launch. Why else are non fanboys going to shell out twice what they will pay 2 years later for a system with only a few games? You need a game that people want to play like crazy for 2-12 months until more games come out because otherwise they won't be playing or buying your system.
I also think that it is important to realize how fads work anyways ... Most fads don't apear out of nowhere and they take a long time to disapear after they have hit their peak. If the Wii were a fad, you'd (probably) see peak sales in Q4 2009 and it would (probably) only start to finally cool down around 2011/2012 ... Consider Reality TV and how it took nearly a decade before it hit its peak popularity and it is still dying slowly.