Posted on 08/27/2007 10:09:57 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
July is supposed to be when things start to cool down for the games industry, as students and holiday makers take time off from games over the summer and spend their breaks doing other things. But not this year.
The latest figures from the US from NPD Group, reported by GameDaily, have the games industry racking up nearly 40 per cent more sales in July compared with last year. And Nintendo is the one to thank.
The Wii and the DS are proving nearly unstoppable, as the pair topped the chart yet again. This time the Wii even managed to outpace its portable housemate, selling 425,000 units compared to 405,000 units for the DS.
If you believed analyst speculation coming into the data report, the PlayStation 3 had at last broken free of the Xbox 360. That turned out not to be the case as Microsoft's console again outsold the PS3, despite a price cut for the latter.
The top game in the US in July was the Xbox 360 version of NCAA Football 08, the latest instalment in the college football series. The PS2 and PS3 versions also made the Top 10.
Microsofts 360 failure issues, and horrible handling of them (nearly 1 in 3 fails) continues to cost them.. that and the fact they really bring nothing new to the party.
Halo 3 might create a small bump in demand over the next month or so, but that's its finally hurrah...
PS3 price cut has clearly caused a spike, will it continue? I think it still needs to drop another $100, but it clearly is moving.. and with BD all but won the HD format war, more units will move.
Wii also moved to most sold console of this generation, completely whiping out MS's over year head start in 9 months.
Supply is still the only thing limiting Wii Sales, no matter how many they make they sell out of every one of them... if you want a WII for christmas, you better buy one when you can. Part suppliers cannot provide more parts fast enough, so even though BIG N is ramping up production abilities, suppliers still can't get them more parts... Sell outs are predicted to continue into 2008.
PS3 is finally getting some legs, Bioshock/Halo may cause a boost for a month or two (I doubt it, but a small one), but I see PS3 outselling 360 by Nov at the latest, and that will be a trend that won't stop once it happens.
MS should shut down its XBOX division, over $20 Billion burned and no end to losses in sight... stock holders should be demanding they stop throwing good money after bad. 360 will end its run with ~25 Million units moved, and a solid 3rd place ranking.
BIG N has this gen locked up.
Raw NPD Numbers:
Wii: 425,000 Nintendo DS: 405,000 PlayStation 2: 222,000 PlayStation Portable: 214,000 Xbox 360: 170,000 PlayStation 3: 159,000 Game Boy Advance: 87,000
I wouldn’t predict the demise of the 360 so quickly. A price cut is coming, and there are plenty more games besides Halo 3 coming out that also have pretty good hype right now: Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 4. The fact that the PS3 STILL couldn’t outsell the 360 after a big price cut says a lot. Sony is still losing money on the PS3, and the 360 still has a ridiculous attach rate, which means more games for the 360, which means more sales.
The Wii still has huge titles coming for it.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Super Mario Galaxy. And Metroid Prime 3: Corruption comes out tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and I’m getting all three. I was just talking about 360 vs. PS3. The fight for first place is all but over.
Sorry, but I stand by 360 being another net loss for MS. They had a year being the only system, and that’s over, they have a 1 in 3 failure rate.
Their price cut, barely staved off the PS3 < 11,000 units.
The Xbox Division has burned more than 20 BILLION dollars in losses since its inception and has no chance of seeing a profit anytime soon.
Sony while you may not like them, has shown it nows how to do something MS has yet to show.. and that’s how to actually make money in gaming.
PS3 will outsell it in terms of units per month I predict by November, 1st quarter 08 at the latest.
MS is desperate, price point is the only play they have left... and they can’t win just on that. They have had more than 1 year longer in the market, and as such have a larger library of games.. and still have been spanked royally by Nintendo, and the PS3 is on the brink of surpassing them as well.
They destroyed themselves as always by pushing out hardware that wasn’t ready and being driven by marketing instead of by technology... something MS always does. They will likely do the same thing again in a year or two, force out a new “next gen” console, that isn’t reliable just to try to be first mover and again lose the war.
MS’s stock holders should be demanding this division be closed, its a black hole that will never bear fruit.
MP3 will completely redefine the FPS/FPA IMHO...
No way mashing analog sticks will ever compete to the immersion and point and fire factor of interacting in 3 dimensional space.
PR is all about HALO, because lets face it, MS knows how to market, you have to give them that. I believe MP3 will be the defining game.
360 dropped its price, not reflecte in these numbers as it didn’t take effect until August 8.
We’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t agree with you.
I will openly admit Sony needs more of a price drop to really stimulate sales, but I don’t see 360 competing long with the last strategy it has... dropping its price.
Its looking at a ~25 Million unit lifespan... which is a 3rd place for it. Lets say the price cut in August boosts it to 200-210,000 units and it managest to stay there, that is still only 2.5 Million units for the year.... and its already closing in on 2 years in the market place.. and still losing money, and price cuts won’t change that.
Sony has a high price point, and that’s what’s harmed it more than anything to date. Its clearly got the better hardware, and with MS’s reliability issue and the fact it covered it up and denied it for so long before acting, has grotesquely harmed the 360 moving forward.
Lets see 350 for the 360, or 500 for the PS3 with build in blu ray? I think personally the PS3 needs to get to $400 quickly... but still, with BD pretty much winning the format war, I see nothing that is going to keep the PS3 from continuing to build, while 360 has nothing to move its sales upward IMHO.
When MS was the only next gen out there, it was moving 300ish a month, now its 150-200ish a month.. and I don’t see that tending upward, only downward.
Sony’s console beens slow moving, but its building, with moving toward 5 Million in a year, even with its high price point... when its price drops to $400 or less, I just don’t see 360 holding it off, and once the PS3 overtakes it, there is no turning back.
360 has ZERO presence in Japan, and its North America lead is soon to fall to Wii just as its worldwide one has... MS is on target for 3rd place finish with ~25 Million units sold.. and another net loss to MS’s bottom line.
IMO, Nintendo does so well because it is a more family-friendly system, and it has some great titles that kids can play. Thing is, in our house, the Nintendo is for the kids, and we have the 360. We were actually considering buying the PS3, but then they announces the multi-format release of Devil May Cry 3, and that ended right there. It was really the only reason we had put real thought into the PS2 to begin with. My husband plays all the sports titles, and Oblivion/Fable type games, and those are available for the Xbox.
Errrr... I meant Devil May Cry 4. Dumb me.
Quick 1,
MS is over $20 BILLION in the hole for XBOX and 360... and that doesn’t include the $1 Billion write off they just took for warrantee claims.
360 was losing $100 per unit at $399... now they’ve dropped the price to $349... so they are still losing $150 per unit. As much as per PS3? Nope... but PS3 is still less than one year into its life cycle, while 360 is closing in on year 2.
MS has never had a profitable console, and the 360 is not going to be one either, they have to earn over $1 BILLION just to make up for the latest write off, let alone the development costs etc, of which they have never paid down ANY of this, for the 360 or the original.
The 360 will never be profitable, can its division have a profitable quater here or there? Perhaps it might, but being a profit for MS overall? No it can’t.
That $100-$150 per unit loss, doesn’t even include overhead costs for things such as marketing, sales costs and other operational costs.
The true loss per unit sold is considerably higher that just the hardware margin loss.
We’ll see how this all plays out, but the 360 will be a net loss for the company even under the best projections, and the next revision will just be another black hole for MS. They will try again to beat the street to next gen only to blow more money and again wind up with a 3rd place finish, I suspect even on the gen that is coming up.
MS knows how to market, its a marketing driven company, they are not a product driven company. They can hype with the best of them, but delivery always falls short, and in hardware, fine you can offer a free upgrade later to fix the problem to meet your marketing driven release date... in hardware you can’t do that.
I don’t see the 360 moving more than ~25 million units tops hwen all is said and done, about the same as the original XBOX, and that means, an overall net loss on the platform for MS.
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