PS3 hits one million sold in Japan, double Xbox 360

Final Fantasy will probably drive 1,764,266 PlayStation 3 units in its first week.

@Triforce

I don't think so. I mean lets use LOZ as an example. People in Japan are crazy for their Zelda, yet Twilight Princess did pretty bad in Japan. I honestly think the same is going to happen to FF13. I just don't see over million japanese gamers just suddenly buying ps3's just to play FF13. It seems that unless the game is on the Ds, Japan isn't interested.

Actually, the initial shipment to Japan was around 200K units. This angered a lot of people in Europe and the US because during the ongoing shortages in those territories, anyone could just walk into a store in Den-Den and buy one. Some people even imported from Japan because they could get it cheaper and sooner.

kon

the 6-1 wii sold started in May.. check it up! work out the maths! if u can..

You can be proud of your own nation without being derogatory towards another.

you are a trashy trashington

vidguy-

Mike's opinion about how Japan's importance and innovation in gaming (beyond the Wii) being on the decline is provacative and deserves other opinions. How about you comment on the bigger picture of what he's saying, rather than dumbing it down to a few sentences and playing the politeness police---which by the way, thanks, we should all be nice.

You want the long version? Ok.

Japan's culture is very different than the US, sure. There's a reason the Wii is outselling all competitors weekly and looks to remain the dominating console this generation - quirky, small, light, nice design, etc, these are things we are told the Japanese like. I'm not quite sure what vending machines and tenticles have to do with gaming culture, but whatever. The US is the land of 75% obesity and shotgun weddings, what do you want?

While the Sony brand has traditionally been strong in Japan, and a million-sold is nice for any company, it's hard to believe it took ~8 months to reach the sales mark. I don't have the resources here but it'd be interesting to see how quickly the PS2 reached that number. Don't blame it on price - it was Sony's strategy to go all out with tech and put that pricetag on their new console.

It's very true that the West can sustain itself in the gaming world, but there's something to be said about the market that is home to two of the three console makers. What is true for Japan is not true for the rest of the world, but that market can seriously affect what goes on here, whether it is consoles, game developers, or simply new ideas.

While Japanese games aren't as popular here in the US anymore, look at Japan's sales. Conversely, look at how well (rather, poorly) US-made games tend to sell in Japan. A large majority of US sales are sports or FPS games; Japan has a different market with different products. We all know what comparing apples and oranges gets us, so can we just take Japan's sales numbers for what they appear to be?

According to vgcharts.org, the PS2 sold approx. 3.3 million whereas the PS3 is at 1 million (launches aligned). I don't know if anything was competing against the PS2 back then, but today's numbers are piss-poor!

Woah, hello gustapo censor police!

When they naturalize all the Mexican Male illegals we will only be 55% Overweight as a nation.

No comment, Negativecool? I typed that all for you ;)

Thanks for the stat, Jason. So PS2 reach 1 million much quicker, to be expected with the pricing but it shows something about the immediate success/failure of Sony's strategy.

It still has a while to go. I don't know how "soon" it'll be.

In the end, I don't know if it's going to matter to publishers who #1 is. If the 360 gets passed up, it's not going to change that they have a 5.9 attach rate. People buy up shit for the thing like crazy, which is even more surprising given the apparently common hardware issues.

Point being, I don't think it's going to affect much for the 360 in the long run. It's simply a pissing contest for Nintendo fans.

I bought a wired controller for my 360 since I didn't feel like paying for a wireless. It crapped out on me after a month.
But at least I haven't gotten the Rings of Death yet.

Speaking of machines breaking, has the PS3 had any problems in this department?

I know when it launched I heard some stories of errors and whatnot, but I haven't heard anything in a long time. That surprises me, given the bad track record the PS1 and PS2 had.

...

Shameless PS3 bash: I guess not enough people own PS3s to know if they're breaking or not...

I'm going to take this as "No Anam, the PS3 isn't having any technical issues."

And then it died....

The Genesis then tried to technologically compete with the SNES adding horrible add-ons and forgetting all their targets.

A PS3 drop to around $400 or less would make it a definite buy for me.

But last time I checked, the name of the game was to not go bankrupt =)

"The 360 is still outselling the PS3 worldwide, despite weak sales in Japan."

What makes you say that...are you just assuming this based on US numbers?

The only concrete numbers we have are for Japan and NA and when you sum those two it puts the PS3 slightly behind. All the PS3 needs to do is slightly outsell the 360 in PAL land and they would be even.

And from the numbers we occasionally get access to it would be safe to say they are equal or the PS3 is slightly ahead in Europe for weekly sales.

I think right now they are either equal WW or they are so close that it doesn't really matter.

All kinds of numbers are available at vgcharts.org
http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php
360 is around 10 million, Wii is not far off and PS3 is around 4 million.

You have one major flaw in that argument. The original Xbox didn't have nearly the problems the 360 does. There was an early problem with some of the Thomson drives getting DDEs, but they were just one of 3 DVD drives being used and that problem was ironed out fairly quickly. The PS2, on the other hand, had constant issues with dead drives throughout the whole of its life cycle. Yet, the PS2 utterly destroyed all comers in Japan and elsewhere. The problem in Japan for MS goes much deeper than build quality.

Um, try 1,500,000-ish. Although, to be fair, the numbers you used are ridiculously optimistic.