Jesse

Nick,

Indeed the past is the past, and at that point the sales were 2-to-1, but the gap was increasing and Nintendo was still supply limited. Nintendo's forecast for the next fiscal year is 14 million Wiis. To put that into perspective, Sony shipped 8 million PS2s for their second fiscal year.

The US market isn't all that different from the Japanese market in terms of sales. This month in the US the PS3 is on track to sell less than 100k units (4 week NPD period). Considering the size difference of the markets, the numbers line up well (45k in Japan vs 100k in the US).

Don't feel bad. The 360's sales are dropping quite a bit also.

Nick, I thought you said the gap was narrowing between the Wii and PS3. It looks to me like it's 7-to-1 this which would continue the trend of growing the Wii gap.

Also, the PS3 is available for $400 in a lot of Japanese stores. In fact, there were sales for well under $400. It's still not selling. In the West, it's clear that a $500 PS3 won't sell (top end edition or not) and in the UK retailers are selling the device for $140 under retail (70 pounds under retail).

And it's still barely selling. A $100 price cut is clearly *not* going to be sufficient. It would have to be a very significant cut.

Actually, you got the story completely wrong. Microsoft's losses on the Xbox 360 are /GROWING/. The rate at which the losses are growing is lower this year than it was last.

Once (more like if, rite?) the 360 maintains profitability for a quarter, then their losses will be shrinking.

Despite a year 2 projection that would nearly double playstation 2 sales figures, I don't think it will keep up with demand.

And, despite doubling PS2 sales figures, people will still bitch about how Nintendo isn't producing many Wiis and how it should be "so easy" to produce a half million a month, without realizing Nintendo would be pumping out well over a million a month at that point.

You do realize that the attach rate calculated for the month is increased if the sales numbers are depressed. With Microsoft's current numbers slowing to about 300k sold per month world wide, it will be a very long time until they reach their goal of 12 million. In fact, as of June 1st they'll probably just barely crack 10 million units sold world wide.

Of course, Microsoft's goal isn't units sold, it's units shipped. And as they showed in the past, you can have 2 million more units shipped than sold.

"2. some good answers there... pro homebrew and even suggesting 'apologize' for mistake?"

He didn't say that they'd support homebrew. He simply dodged the question and made it /sound/ like Sony supported homebrew. But they'll continue to stifle it, as they have, because they believe homebrew = pirates.

"i just want to know how many people in japan have held off purchases but plan to buy once titles like FFXIII hit."

It can't be very many because FF sales in Japan are approximately 3 million for the biggest releases. Many of these people will already have PS3s. Many of them will get their FF 13 flavor from the DS-lite.

To put it in perspective, about 15% of PS2 owners purchased Final Fantasy X. That's a pretty good attach rate, but it doesn't suggest that the one game will equate to success in Japan or anywhere else.

To be blunt, GTA4 is a much bigger system-seller than Final Fantasy ever was.

Regarding NPD numbers:

It's also worth noting that the PSP, despite doing poorly in Japan and not very well in Europe, had traditionally outsold the DS in the states. This is no longer the case, even after the PSP price drop.

Sony needs a lot more than just price drops to start selling these things. It has already been shown that $500 ain't gonna sell the PS3. Sales continue to slide on the device like there is no tomorrow.

Nick, you do realize that week-on-week sales in March were far worse for the PS3 than February. Feb is a 4 week NPD period and March is a 5 week NPD period.

The trend for PS3 sales has been consistent: sales have dropped almost every week in almost every region in which it has been released.

"rush that is just simply not possible on any other platform due to the massive processing power of the cell processor / supercomputer inside."

The cell is 1/5th as powerful as my new ATI video card. You realize that the ATI video card can absolutely crush the cell at things like "GPU processing for gaming" and parallel processing like SETI@Home.

The Wii is going to become massively popular once more people get it (and therefore others discover it). What we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of which, the pool of people willing to buy the PS3 at its current price without any interesting games coming out in the next few months is just getting smaller and smaller. I can't believe how sharply the sales have dropped off.