Why The PS3 Does Not Share The Xbox 360's Success

The guys over at cinemablend.com have put up a very interesting article regarding the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Before lambasting the site with “X-fan” comments, this is not a PS3 bashing article. We got most of those out of the way late last year, and a little bit in the early part of this year. Still, many readers tend to think that the PS3 is not doing that bad, and that the sales are on track in the same way that the Xbox 360 was during the same period of last year.

There are two reasons why the former frame of thinking is incorrect: First, the market was very different one year ago. The Xbox 360 was competing with the hype of the PlayStation 3, the shadow of the then-labeled Nintendo “Revolution” and decent PS2 and Xbox software sales. Second, sales for the Xbox 360 and Wii are continuously picking up, while the PS3 sales are continuously declining.

In the instance of the first reason, competition has a lot to do with console sales. During the first six months of the Xbox 360's release, it was nearly on-par to where the PS3 is now, but did so with poor shipments. Sony’s shipment errs were over with by mid-December of 2006. Microsoft’s shipment woes carried over into March of 2006. However, the 360 had picked up sales drastically in June, and by September the Xbox 360 was already at 2.7 million units sold and planted in North America. Hence, the 360 was not falling into the same pit as the PS3, six months into its release. And as mentioned above, people didn’t have the competitive incline to buy the 360 at the time. It was the same for the PS2 during its first six-months after launch – a lack of competition (plus, the Dreamcast was dead right out of the gate) only had the PS2 with steady sales gains (but never a decline like the PS3). But once the Xbox and Gamecube came along, the PS2 was already shifting massive amounts of consoles every month, even up until now.

Alternatively, the PS3, in its seventh month, has barely surpassed the 1.5 million mark in North America. While some may say that’s not a big deal in comparison to the Xbox 360 sales last year...only shifting 80k units a month is a big deal. It’s a sad deal. But it’s not like these numbers are just a one-time deal; the PlayStation 3 has started a new trend of shifting only 80,000 units a month, for the past few months. By September, the PS3 will not have a 2.7 million installed unit base in North America, if it continues its downward sales trend.

Read the full article from cinemablend.com