The numbers have been punched, the data has been compiled and the money has been tallied.
Sony just busted out a record year for the Playstation 3, totaling a record-setting and monstrous 14.3 million PS3s sold over a 12 month period ending on March 31st. So, you would think that as a result, the Playstation 3 has finally overtaken at least one if its rivals?
Well, you thought wrong.
The numbers released show that Sony’s record sales of 14.3 million have brought their Playstation 3 sales tally up to a total of 50 million units sold, however, reports are in that Microsoft have, as of January 2011, have sold a total of 53.6 million which also means that those numbers are two months behind.
While the Xbox 360 is still seeing a massive surge since the launch of the quieter and more reliable Xbox 360 250GB ‘Slim’ console as well as the heavily marketed Kinect peripheral, the Playstation 3 has been forging ahead strongly with sales since its first major price drops and slim console release.
Game sales have also been boosted significantly from 115.6 million units sold to a giant amount of just under 150 million. We don’t have the sales from rival platforms to compare, but this may be as a result of the hugely packed gaming rosters that have become commonplace recently combined with the improved sales of the console and possibly even bundles.
Welcome to the party
The statistics also show that the Playstation 3 may very well be benefiting from the millions of Playstation 2 users who are finally moving over from their previous-gen console over to the its younger HD brother.
The data that shows that the now-ancient Playstation 2 sales plummeting from a still impressive 7.3 million units from last year down to 6.4 million this year. All hasn’t been so bright for the constantly struggling PSP either as Sony posted their worst ever year after only selling 8 million units, despite PSP game sales managing 46.6 million.
Sony is launching the NGP aka PSP2 later this year but with the PSPs bad record and the slow sales of the 3DS, there is no indication on whether or not it will help or hinder the business’ progress.
What about those other little factors… like earthquakes and PSN downtime?
Sony have also pointed out that these numbers poster were not affected by the recent catastrophes faced by Sony, namely the terrible Tsunami that shocked the world and literally swept most of Japan off of its feet.
They have pointed the earthquake out as one of the contributing factors towards why the Sony company as a whole (not only the Playstation division) suffered a loss of R2,200,000,000.00 (£192.6 million / ¥256.9 billion / $314.1 million), yes, that rand value is in the billions.
It is also mentioned though, that the damage from the PSN hack has not affected the numbers as it took place in April, after the numbers had already been tallied.
Sony do say though that the hack will likely be costing them in the region of R1,2 billion and the company on the whole is expecting to be hit by a total of 22,2 billion rand (£1.95 billion / $3.2 billion) and that, if you didn’t notice, is an ridiculously large amount of money that makes their current losses look like pocket change.
The way things are going, things have been looking like they have been going nowhere but up for the Playstation 3, but with the devastating earthquake and tsunami along with the hack on the Playstation Network, Sony definitely have their work cut out for them.
As far as focusing just no the Playstation 3 goes, the console’s sales are looking better and better as time progresses, so I would expect good numbers from Sony for the PS3 brand alone come this time next year.
Source: Eurogamer
Last Updated: May 26, 2011
