Soft PS3 sales spell trouble for EA, others

Even if the PS3 does pull a rabbit out of it's hat as far as it's "advanced" technology goes, most games will not take advantage of it, because it just doesn't make sense for a developer to devote lots of time and money for exclusives for the system when people aren't buying it. Most games that DO come out for the system will be ports, and the few exclusives it has left won't sell systems 'til it's too late in the game for it to make other developers jump on the bandwagon.

to my shock, MS's decision to release the 360 so early makes sense now... I wonder if they had banked on this the entire time?

Isn't Wii a threat to the xbox 360 if its demand is so high and it has a much wider audience target?

@36

are you honestly trying to sell me on ANYONE having the RIGHT to be arrogant? Arrogance is not a good thing. It's not a respectfull quality, and justifiably, I LOST RESPECT AND WILL FURTHERMORE HAVE MUCH ENJOYMENT AND LAUGHTER WHILST WATCHING TEH PS3 GO DOWN IN FLAMES>


BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

*plays Nintendo*

Its been said before, its sales will pick up once more GAMES come out for it.

I mean cuz lets be honest, the 360 wasn't exactly burning up the sales charts until recently either.

and while the Wii is doing well outselling its competition by far at launch (whooped 360 AND PS3's collective butts in terms of launch #'s) it still remains to be seen if it has enough steam to keep going.

Same goes with the PS3, its lacking right now, but hopefully it'll get some good games soon, that was 360's problem in its first few months too, no one was buying it because it didn't have any worthwhile games to a lot of people, but that has recently changed with the bevvy of great titles for it.

The Ps3 just needs to hit that stride as well. But still its not like its exactly bombed either, but did anyone expect a 500/600 dollar console to outsell a 250 dollar one at first anyway or a 100 to 200 dollar cheaper system with WAY more games?
I sure didnt

But the next year will be interesting for all 3 systems

PS3 sales are not soft. PS3 sales are ahead of where 360 was a year ago, despite only launching in two countries. PS3 sales may not be where Sony said they'd be, but if EA still believes game manufacturers' predictions of launch sales, they didn't pay enough attention to the PS2 or Xbox 360 launches and so it's partially their own fault.

Note again: you cannot measure sales by looking at inventory.

i.e. looking at shelves and seeing there are units there cannot tell you sales. You could be looking at iPods, which were in stock everywhere and selling well this Xmas despite being launched in October (2G Nano and Shuffle), selling 21M. Alternately, you could be looking at Zunes, which were in stock everywhere and selling very poorly despite being launched in October, selling well under a million.

Stop measuring sales by looking at on shelves inventory, it's completely useless if you don't know how many units are being put on the shelves.

"34. All this FUD is getting pretty tiresome. How much does porting an EA title to the PS3 seriously add to development costs? EA games run on every platform under the sun, with virtually identical content, textures, models etc. for similar-tier platforms. I doubt that the PS3 adds an extra 10% onto development, QA or marketing budgets for your average EA title, and I doubt that "soft" sales (whatever that means) really will hurt EA as long as they sell strong on the 360."

DrXym, it doesn't have anything to do with how much it cost them to do it. It has everything to do with how they projected their profits based on their sales. If profits for EA miss their target, of say $1.25/share, by 10% then that is over $0.12/share. In the business world, that is HUGE and EA stock will drop and the stock holders will be pissed and the CEO will have to adjust.

And as for Sony's arrogance, MS arrogance and what not. I could care less, last i checked they didn't sign any checks for me so i dont owe fealty to any company.

I'll play whatever system releases the games that i play the most (which is why i have all 3, since Sony has the RPG market locked up at the moment i still play a ton of those, MS has the great online service and Ninty has... Ninty titles).

All in all though i dont care if Kaz said this or Reggie said that, etc etc. It doesnt effect my game playing at all and i just see them as corporate mouth pieces anyway and what company WONT sell up its product?

nick:
BluRay sales ARE dramatically better due to PS3.

http://www.dvdempire.com/index.asp?userid=99365275137904&tab_id=61&site_id=68&site_media_id=0

See the chart in the upper right about what sales are? A week ago, it was 57:43 in favor of BluRay for the week, and 53:47 in favor of HD-DVD for the month. Now BluRay is outselling HD-DVD 2:1.

Check the wars as tracked by Amazon:

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/

Note I find these numbers suspect, but they show the same trends.

PS3 has hugely impacted BluRay sales for the better.

@36
A great basketball player isn't competing with only two other basketball players. Sony was #1 of 3. And even if Sony were #1 of 103, people are generally turned off by arrogance, which is different than confidence. Confidence is, "Yes, the PS3 will be great because it is being built with Sony's know how." Arrogance is, "Our competitors products are for children and in no way compete with our products."

Just for reference, according to vgcharts.org, Sony has SOLD 1.55 million units in the US and Japan.

While not great, it's not terrible. I agree Sony needs more games fast. March will be an interesting month for Sony because there are a TON of games coming out many of which are very good, whether they're exclusive or multiplatform. If sales pickup considerably in March and subsequent months, we'll know for sure that it's all about the software. But if sales don't pickup, Sony has definitely priced themselves out of the market.

No kidding, RYAN. yoma, Sony has a right to be proud of what they accomplished, yes, but pride is much different than arrogance.

Being arrogant means exaggerating one's own worth and making presumptuous claims or assumptions (both dictionary definitions). This is exactly what Sony officials have done, claiming that the PS3 is "too cheap" and assuming that people will eat up their crap just because it says PLAYSTATION3 in some over-used font.

We can respect PROUD people, but we love to see ARROGANT people fall on their faces. Isn't it fun and amusing to complete destroy someone in competition (such as a video game or sports game) when they are blabbing on about how they are going to destory you - before the game even starts!?!

No one earns the right to be arrogant.

"PS3 sales are not soft. PS3 sales are ahead of where 360 was a year ago, despite only launching in two countries."

The 360 was riding in on the rather tattered coattails of the original Xbox, which did terribly... plus, there were still shortages of them around at this point in it's lifespan - you couldn't find one until well into spring.

But you don't measure one console's worth by where another one was a year ago - you measure it as how it looks to developers and consumers, and right now, there really isn't a good reason to buy a PS3 over a 360 or a Wii, and there won't be for quite some time, if ever.

Powertrade, even if that's true, it's still hurting them. PS3 games are still holding them down, and according to you 360 sales are just offsetting, meaning they aren't making any profit. They are just staying where they are, which is alright, but not what a company wants.

@Niel

Wow, everyone else is a 'nerd' yet you read, processed and completed your 1st comment(#6) on this article within 13 minutes of it being posted. Then a number of 'nerdy' comments after that were addressing the shortfalls and lack of foresight of your comment.

Explain to me why everyone else is a 'nerd'?

50. "Stop measuring sales by looking at on shelves inventory, it's completely useless if you don't know how many units are being put on the shelves."

Two problems with this theory:

1. Video game consoles are a commodity which is epxected to sell through almost instantly for the first 3-6 months of its lifespan. The PS3's failure to do that is an indicator.

2. Sony keeps bragging about how many units have reached store shelves. So we do know that piece of information.

I dont know if that 1st point is entirely true WRD, video game consoles have only recently (last half dozen or so years) come into their own. Heck when Gamecube and xbox first came out i had no trouble walking in and seeing them on shelves days or even weeks after they launched, the initial rush they were hard to get but after a month or so, they were readily available that i found.

But with as much as gaming has grown in the last few years i could understand that theory that they should sell through inf irst few months, but lets also not forget manufacturing has a big deal to do with that. For instance 360s you couldnt find for several months after it launched but then stores had a hard time even getting them instock, Even take the Wii, the local stores i know have haven't gotten a whole lot DESPITE Nintendo saying they've shipped 4 million, where as they KEEP getting at leat 6-10 PS3's in every week like clockwork.

So i'm assuming that can change depending on what location you're in, but thats just what i've noticed in my own town.

the whole thing that boils my blood about the arrogance, is that microsoft is the king of it with their windows dominance but no one cares when they start gloating like crazy with xbox either (a product that hasent dominated anything yet). when sony does it everyone starts moralizing and all this crazy stuff, i just think its hypocritical. microsoft=free pass, sony=directly to jail, and reggie fils aime is starting to get on my nerves too but w.e. ill leave nintendough out of this for now.

I am amazed at how many people don't get the major problem here - people won't back games for a system few own. Especially when the development cost is higher than with the other systems. Until Sony sells some units all of us who own them could be left in the dark for future games.

There is no upside to this for Sony PS3 owners - stop kidding yourself into thinking there is.

Revenues!=profits.

The actual profits on these games rely on selling enough copies. Since there aren't enough PS3s purchased to sell Madden to, EA will certainly lose profit, which is the only figure shareholders really care about. There is also a certain future issue, if their forecasts are based on selling $60 games and too many gamers move to cheaper formats like Wii and DS

Last year Sony was still saying that that PS3 would be out in Spring 2006. So EA, etc., reasonably estimated that the # of potential PS3-owning customers would likely be 2-3 times what they are now.

I think, up until this year, Sony kept their promises to developers at least. They can't say that anymore.

And it IS Sony's fault that the games stink. The Dev kits were late, the Cell's custom design is a nightmare to work with, and their online plans were late.

"the Cell's custom design is a nightmare to work with" - 64.

yo mj, you a developer, or are you taking bush league developer's words for it? you know, just checking, cuz people believe all kinds of s#^t these days.

The biggest problem with the PS3 is the price. Most people can not justify $600 for a video game system. This in turn makes it more difficult for developers to make PS3 exclusives, because of the small profit margin. The numbers for GOW vs the numbers for R:FOM shows that right now it is more profitable to make games for the 360 now. In business larger profits now is more important than potential to make profits. Sony has lost some of it's biggest exclusives AC, VF5 and more coming on the way. Sony needs to drop the price making it more attractive to the consumer so that developers would be inclined to keep exclusives exclusive.

yes the CELL designed by IBM sucks... of course this is the same IBM that designed the chipsets for the Wii and 360...but no matter =)

But MJ by that logic, no one would of developed games for the 360 to begin with either because why develop for the expensive 360 (which warranted a $10 price increase) when it was cheaper to develop for the PS2?

While NOW that may be a different story, you have to start somewhere. PS2 was a nightmare to develop for at first and now look at it, games can be spewed out onea fter another once prices went down to develop for as it hit its stride.

Everything is expensive to develop for at first.

the reason that blu ray is outselling hd dvd this week is because they released like 100 new blu rays while hd dvd only released 2.

"If Sony can pump out the games people want to play, people will buy the console. "

Except that Sony always had relied on 3rd parties like Square, Electronic Arts and others to do that for them, and with how things are going, they will jump ship to greener pastures.

@69

CELL sucks because? How about you supporting your opinion with some facts?

@71 "Except that Sony always had relied on 3rd parties"

Except that the PS3 had the most first-party launch games of the three systems. 4 of the PS3's 15 launch games were published by Sony. That's almost a third! In contrast, 3 of the 360's 18 U.S. launch games were published by Microsoft, and only 3 of the Wii's 26 U.S. launch games were published by Nintendo. Of all three launches, the PS3 received the least third-party love, and was the most dependent on first-party games.

"yo mj, you a developer, or are you taking bush league developer's words for it? you know, just checking, cuz people believe all kinds of s#^t these days."

I don't know about him, but when Hideo fucking Kojima syas a console is ahrd to develop for, I believ him.

Poor Sony....I think their number really is up. There are some serious catch 22's going around it's not even funny. Their biggest mistake was trying to incorporate Blu Ray into the system and now it seems as though they just bit off way more than they could chew.

Alas poor Sony....I knew them well.

Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley stores don't have any PS3's, the same goes for Ft. Lauderdale, San Francisco or Houston. So are the PS3's sitting in some rural area or somewhere where they don't even have electricity? By this time next year the PS3 will be selling well, it's still pretty expessive.

*Fuck Nintendo

RE:75. Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley stores don't have any PS3's, the same goes for Ft. Lauderdale, San Francisco or Houston...

YEAH right buddy....I live IN San Francisco and they have over 50+ UNITS in stock @ the SONY store. STOP LYING FOR SONY!!

Just for the record Sony sold 25k PS3s in Japan last week while the Wii sold 90. 6 million by March is dreamland baby, lol.

Wii owners are going to feel so left behind that eventually they will have to step up to a real gaming system, PS3.

What has to happen before sony fanboys stop defending the PS3 and bashing Wii for no reason?
How about if sony double the price and announce that the only first party title they will release this year is a super HD version of Pong?
I bet you would still get one or two saying "PS3 is teh best" and "wii is only for kiddies!"

The reason there is so much negative press for sony is because there are alot of reasons to be negative about that company at the moment, there is no worldwide conspiracy to discredit your precious console, as some here seem to think.

And finally can all the idiots shut up saying that it is too early in the PS3's lifespan to make any claims of failure, as we won't know for at least a year who is the "winner", and then in the next breath are telling us how the PS3 will pwn all "in a years time", "when there are some good games". I would much rather discuss the facts as they stand right now than the musings of aparently clairvoyant sony fanboys.

"23. when are they going to get it?
IT'S TOO FUCKIN EXPENSIVE!!!!"


I have to disagree. Frankly, I can easily afford it. Not bragging, just saying that for access to next gen games + blu ray player + thousands of PS2 games its not expensive.

Who knew there were so many poor gamers that they would complain so vocally about price?
Do you complain about everything you cannot afford?

People will think I'm an A-hole for saying this but its true.
The PS3 is a bargain for the 3 reasons i stated above. Its only being ripped on becuase people thought they should be able to buy one for $400 instead of $600.

Yes these analyst reports are super accurate. These are probably the same analysts predicting that PS3 sales would dominate (even with the $500 - $600 price tag). I don't buy this. I can understand this report if EA only made games for one platform or if sales for all consoles were bad, but given their history of simultaneous releases for all platforms and the fact that Nintendo and MS sales are healthy; I really doubt this will be a problem especially if they can just cut future PS3 development.

This post means nothing.
It marks PS3 as unsuccessful while it hasn't even started to show it's true self.
I mean, everyone now knows exactly what xbox is capable of, and it's very disappointing.
PS3 is right on track to blow them all away again.
This post won't change that.
Playstation has always had the very best games.

Speaking to pricing:

Just because I can afford a PS3 several dozens of times over doesn't mean I think it's a good investment. The $600 price tag is a legitimate one, but only if I view the PS3 as a multi-use entertainment hub. Since I put games as a priority, (for a gaming console no less!), the PS3's lacklustre lineup is vastly dissapointing. And I have demoed nearly all the launch games.

So, gamers wait for devs to make the games who wait for Sony to sell PS3's to gamers who are waiting for devs...

I have all 3 next gen consoles. Out of the 3, I am rooting for the PS3. Right now I am playing mostly on XBOX 360, Gears of War and Lost Planet. But I think PS3 has the potential to be the best system once the games come out this year.

The 20 Gig Xbox360 was $399 + $99 for wifi add on = $499; if I try to add HD-DVD another $200 making it more expensive than PS3. You can't expand that 20 Gig. My harddrive is already full from all the downloads from XBOX live. The 60 Gig PS3 came with wifi and blu-ray for only $100 more so price wise PS3 is very competitive. Also, the games on the Wii are mostly for kids since characters on most of the titles currently available are cartoonish. My brother who is not a gamer at all noticed that. Wii is fun for playing in group short, simple games (I have Zelda - it's fun but I wish it had better graphics - it makes a huge difference on my 65" screen); but for serious next gen game play, you'll want something that can handle HD with a lot of storage.

If you are already spending $1500 on a HDTV, why save $100 and get a lot less system (less storage, no blu-ray, no HDMI (1080p)).

It has been a pleasure reading most of your collect comments. To add my few words to this never-ending story about which console is best or who sold more and which software vendor will ultimately piss away their blue chip stock options on PS3 emit failure. For the real gamers all we care about is playing quality games period! If I finish a game within a week of playing it's not worth my money. We have reached a new level of graphics and killed new systems with pretty pixel. Put some thought into creating some new ideas, which bring forth enjoying games...people will buy your console. And for the Nintendo haters...come on...you know deep know Mario rules. What other console company you know that exist today that started in the early 80's (84 baby). Say what you will, but I think that's pretty impressive!!

well... guys... i can just say a few things to you... first my english sucks ''P.

- Sony have more than 800 millions i think they really dont care about that.
- All the nintendo'sfan's are Excited cuz a controllers they think that the Wii will be a good console in a future with that crappy hardware and a good controller.
- The xbox 360, have the best games :-) right now... and their hardware is nice to handle that kind of games... but cant handle the Next generation of games! like Crysis...( CRYTEK ) they are look the way to make run Crysis on the xbox360 with less graphics and performance than the ps3 read more new's abut that and you guys can see, the wii cant even handle the next generations of games comming this right year :) JUST PS3 can handle it with full performance and graphics thats a good news for the ps3.

- If you guys can think for a few minutes, you guys can see that the PS3 it will be the best console along in this year... so i'm happy just wating for all the new and all the best of PS3. We have the best hardware, and Sony's is redising they controllers... and they are looking if they can make a 360Wi-Fi like the Wii... READ GUYS! so...

- did you guys ever see the game list of the Wii? :O nice games like CARS wooo nice and SpongeBOB lol and more of that kind of games... the only nice game is Zelda... i like that game.

Long life to PS3 and just w8 till, they release the games :)... i have more thing to say but i think that this is Sufficient.

Doesn't anyone think that part of the reason PS3 sales are so bad is because the PS1 and PS2 were notorious pieces of crap? The average PS2 goes geriatric after a year, and some of them are almost unplayable after 2 because of the crappy lens. I've seen a guy who owns an appliance repair shop post that he gets 3-5 PS2's in every week, and he's only seen an Xbox once. PS2 repair has become a big business in itself. There are dozens of websites dedicated to nothing else. Fixmyplaystation.com has been around for years; Fixmynintendo.com apparently wasn't worth registering as a domain name, even though nintendo's have been around 20 years.

I would never buy a PS3 because if it's anything like my PS1 or PS2 I'd be blowing 600$ on a system that's going to give me disc read errors 49 out of 50 times when I haven't even owned it 2 years. It's not just me either. Most of my friends with a PS2 have the same problem. Meanwhile, some of us still have working nintendos from 1986.

Joystiq, seriously this is getting out of hand. You bash the PS3 all the time. Always reporting bad news about. you guys are the only gaming site reporting this news.
Also this site, says different.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-bk-ea020107,0,6688999.story?coll=orl-business-headlines

how much is ps3 sold for

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0030009Z3KYU

This website basically disproves this whole article. It seems that the only articles on Joystiq are anti-PS3 ones. EA took in $41 million net off of the PS3 titles and $29 million in titles for the Wii. Tell me now that it is unprofitable to make games for the PS3

As much as I despise Sony, I think it would be bad for gaming as a whole if they tanked. The competition between these system developers is part of the driving force for great first-party games. When you lose one, think of the unrealized ideas that the in-house developers never get to try. What if it where the PSone that had failed instead of the Sega Saturn? Would that mean that we wouldn't have had Gran Turismo or Metal Gear? Not that the Saturn didn't have any great first-party games. Anyone remember Nights: Into Dreams? I really hope the PS3 can get something going soon, for the sake of some great games that will surely be coming down the line.

I'd like to comment first on the fact that people think that EA is going to suffer from lack of PS3 sales. 90% off the games I buy are from EA. They sell for 50 dollars on any system and every year I will buy the same games no matter what system I own. Which brings me to my second point, Playstation is my favorite system and I have no intention of switching to another. I don't claim to be a finational( which I clearly can't even spell ) expert but I can only assume Sony knew they were not going to be able move the product for $700. The 2 people I know who could afford to go out and buy it did. If they can sell the first million for $700, why not, doesn't sound stupid to me. I intend to wait for the system to be affordable and can only assume there are millions of others who feel the same. However, beware Sony. We can only wait so long. If the PS3 price isn't comparable to the 360 within the year, I may be on the Bill Gates bandwagon and never come back.

Sony is outselling XBOX 360 in Japan. Let us all remember that the PS2 is outselling all consoles. Those users would presumably upgrade to the PS3 when the pricepoint is right.

Isn't Wii a threat to the xbox 360 if its demand is so high and it has a much wider audience target?

Thats not gonna happen for example most people (i no) would rather play games such as gta pro evo etc on a tradional controller and in time might own both consoles as most of my m8s had a ps2/ game cube xbox 1 / game cube when the price comes down but the Wii will do far better then the cube ever did and ps3 hopefully XD

This PS3 vs XBox vs WII competition is capitalism at its most pathological. No one wins in these wasteful format wars yet many are deluded into thinking such competition is inherently desirable. Consumers end up paying the overhead for developing and marketing three platforms, the extra costs for cross platform titles, and have to deal with the limitations that some titles are exclusives. When a platform fails and loses market share... what happens to a consumer's investment? Can companies work together? Sure. They did to create a single DV videotape standard then a single DVD standard. It lead to rapid market acceptance. Not that these pathological competitive games didn't start again soon after leading to a recordable DVD format war… and incompatible professional DV formats.

This goes to show that "power" doesn't mean anything when it comes to gaming. The Genesis was more powerful than the SNES. The PS3 more than the Wii. The PSP more than the DS. The gamers don't care. We just want to play good games on good systems that we don't have to spend a whole paycheck on. I used to like Sony, I really did. Until the Lik-Sang incident and the overpriced and overrated PSP and PS3, not to mention the back stabbing of Nintendo over the original Playstation. Enough is enough!