Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan in September, beating the rival machine in monthly unit sales for the first time in Sony's home market, a game magazine publisher said.
Strong sales growth came after Microsoft cut prices for its game console last month.
Microsoft sold 53,547 units of the Xbox 360 in the four weeks to September 28, compared with 33,071 units of the PS3, data from Enterbrain showed on Friday.
Nintendo Co Ltd safely maintained its leading position in the Japanese console market, having sold 109,548 units of the Wii during the month.
Although popular in the United States, the Xbox 360 has been struggling to compete with the PS3 and the Wii in Japan, home to both Sony and Nintendo.
In a bid to lift sales, Microsoft on September 11 cut the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade, which comes without a hard disk drive, by 8,000 yen ($76) to 19,800 yen. It also lowered the price of the high-en... More »
According to a report from Japan's Nikkei business daily via Reuters, Nintendo is planning to launch an updated Nintendo DS model by the end of 2008. Among other options, the new model is expected to feature a built-in camera along with support for the playback of music files.
To quote: Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd plans to launch a new model of its DS handheld machine that can take pictures and play music by the end of the year, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.
The move would pit the top-selling portable game gear with Apple Inc iPod and camera-embedded cellphones in general.
The price for the new machine, which will also be equipped with advanced wireless communications functions, is expected to be below 20,000 yen ($189) in Japan, compared with 16,800 yen for the current model, the Nikkei said.
The Wii game console and DS have been Nintendo's twin growth engines, helping its share price to grow more than thr... More »
According to Joystiqs sources, Microsoft is cracking open the champagne. The Xbox 360's sales have topped the 10M in the US alone. That's well ahead of the Wii, which stands at 8.8M, and the PS3, which sold 4.1M.
Worldwide, Microsoft says it's sold 19M consoles total. That's behind the Wii's global sales of 25M units, but Microsoft isn't exactly content with second place it's making a point to say that the 360 has the "largest global install base of any current gen, high definition gaming console.".
Meanwhile, the PS3s doing quite nicely for itself as well in addition to outselling the 360 in both the US and Europe, Sony says worldwide sales were up an astounding 156 percent last year with a total of 9.2M units coming off shelves, and that it expects to sell another 10M consoles by March 2009.
Looks like it's going to be an interesting year in the console market.
I wonder if the Wii's novelty factor will continue, or if the ... More »
The PS2 outsold the PS3 in fiscal year 2008 by 4 million units. The figures are as follows: PSP - 13.9 million units, PS2 – 13.73 million units, PS3 – 9.24 million units.
According to Sony’s Q4 earnings announcement for the 2007 fiscal year, the company expects to sell ten million PlayStation 3 units throughout fiscal 2008, which began on April 1 and ends March 31, 2009.
Comparatively, Sony pushed 9.24 million units in the previous fiscal year. Despite outpacing PS3 sales for the second year in a row, the company expects PS2 sales to drop off next year, forecasting yearly sales of 9 million, down from 13.73 million units in fiscal 2007.
Moving away from the console market, Sony is anticipating that worldwide PSP sales will hit 15 million throughout the course of fiscal 2008, up from 13.89 million the previous year.
To quote: The breakdown of the company’s hardware sales for the year ending March 31st, 2008 reads:
Another day, another story about how the release of Monster Hunter Portable G 2nd in Japan has caused a country-wide frenzy of consumerism. Since its release last Thursday, the game reportedly sold out on its first day on sale, then went on to shift over one million copies within six days.
Today, chart data from Famitsu based on software and console sales for last week (March 24-30th) and reprinted here shows what sort of impact the game's release has had on console sales in Japan.
Answer: a massive one.
Last week PSP actually managed to sell more units than all of its competitor consoles put together. The handheld sold approximately 139,000 units, compared to (rounded up or down) 57,000 DSs, 49,000 Wiis, 13,000 PS3s and 2,800 Xbox 360s.
The game itself unsurprisingly tops the Japanese multiformat chart. But to put it in perspective, the game in second place – Pokémon Ranger: Batonnage – only sold an eighth of the copies Monster ... More »
Things are looking up for PSP in Sony's homeland, as it managed to nip ahead of DS in hardware sales figures for last week.
According to Media Create digits for the week ending February 24, Sony managed to sell 53,373 PSP units, knocking the 50,151-selling DS temporarily off its perch.
It seems the several sexy renditions of the PSP Slim and humanity's growing fascination with satellite navigation is working wonders for Sony's handheld.
Wii sales in the territory still dominate, with 63,504 topping the hardware list in the same week, while PS3 only managed 14,060. Poor 360 only grabbed the attention of 2001 customers.
It's great to see both portables selling well - if only it were the same for the console market out there.
It's less than two months since the launch of the PlayStation 3 in North America and Japan. The highly anticipated, supposedly ultra-powerful next-gen video game system from Sony has, according to just about every legitimate news source, flopped.
Availability for the launches had been pathetic, must-have software remains limited to Resistance: Fall of Man, the console is super expensive ($599 for the 60GB model), Sony is mired in debt due to the outrageous production costs incurred by producing the console, and to make matters worse, Microsoft and Nintendo are soaring.
The Wii caught on huge in Japan - and just about everywhere else - and the Xbox 360 had already enjoyed a one-year head-start, in which we saw more than a few great titles. Blu-Ray, still in its infancy, hasn't yet started to move much, considering the lack of PS3s in the marketplace. Whispers of "another Betamax" are rampant... Doom and gloom permeates almost every PS3-related news story, and... More »
PlayStation continues to dominate and is doing it right for 2008. They outsold the competition combined with a total of 296,000 PS3’s sold in the month of January. That’s 17% higher than Microsoft.
PSN had a total of 7.9 million downloads which topped Decembers 6.6 Million. I’m sure Microsoft will answer with their numbers by tomorrow.
PlayStation by the Numbers: January 2008 PS3 Outsells Xbox 360; PlayStation Brand Outsells Competition Combined
PlayStation Hardware Momentum
• PS3 Outsold Xbox 360: PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) demonstrated continued momentum in January 2008 with 269K hardware units sold in January, 17% higher than Microsoft.
• PLAYSTATION®Network total downloads exceeded 7.9 million in January 2008, well above the 6.6 million in December 2007. Currently in North America there are more than 2.9 million registered PLAYSTATION Network accounts and more than 52M total downloads life-to-date from PLAYSTATION ... More »
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