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PS3 bested by older brother

by Mike Smith
Buzz up!
May 18 2:42 P.M.

According to official April figures released by the NPD Group, the Playstation 3 found itself beaten out for fifth place by an unusual competitor: its predecessor, the Playstation 2.


Still the boss

A 50% leap in Playstation 2 sales accounts for the surprising change, an increase likely prompted by the system's price cut on April 1, a move which apparently electrified interest in the nine-year old platform.

The PS2's success was probably the only nugget of April sales news to put smiles on the faces of Sony execs. Nintendo platforms continued their lockdown of the top spots, with the Wii coming second and the DS coming both first and third, courtesy of the just-launched DSi: the DS's two hardware variations accounted for an astonishing million sales during April.Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 was down slightly over last April, but still managed a solid fourth place and remains on course for a record-breaking year.

But both the Playstation 3 and PSP posted disappointing results, with the PS3 placing sixth with its worst performance in over 18 months, and the PSP limping in seventh with a total of 116,000 sales -- down over 30% on March's numbers.

The news has revitalized persistent rumors of price cuts for Sony's PS3. The system's base model is between $150 and $200 more expensive than its competitors, the Wii and Xbox 360. Industry news site Gamasutra predicts we'll see a $100 cut in the $400 Playstation 3 announced at the E3 video games trade show in Los Angeles in early June.

So if you're contemplating taking the Playstation plunge -- and with top exclusive superhero thriller Infamous just a week away, we're betting some of you are -- you might well want to hold off and wait to see what June has in store.

LordOskuro wrote:On the other hand, being repurposed as a BluRay player might give it a bigger draw with casual gamers (aka adults) who are not so into the Wii.

Crossroads Inc. wrote:FOLLOW THE LINK

So we've heared this time and toime again, the PS3 is dead and dying, who knows if it is truely going down, but its one more nail in the coffin.

The PS2's success was probably the only nugget of April sales news to put smiles on the faces of Sony execs.

Rye wrote:I don't get this bit. Are there even new PS2s in the system anymore? All the ones Game sell are preowned. Poorer customers have access to cheap preowned consoles and games, so yeah, that side of sales will look pretty good.

Joviwan wrote:
Tons of them. You can find a shelf full of them behind the glass case in the electronics department at almost any large retailer (eg. Target, Walmart). At least, you can where I live.

Rye wrote:

Crossroads Inc. wrote:FOLLOW THE LINK

So we've heared this time and toime again, the PS3 is dead and dying, who knows if it is truely going down, but its one more nail in the coffin.

It doesn't sell as well as really cheap consoles. That's far from "dead and dying".

Commander 598 wrote: I believe the point is that it's not selling as well as a cheap console from almost a decade ago.

Pelranius wrote:Sony's making a profit off the PS3 (despite the small installed base), so they probably won't bother with a price cut until the next big retail season.

Pelranius wrote:Oh, my bad. I meant that their gaming division was profitable.

Commander 598 wrote:I believe the point is that it's not selling as well as a cheap console from almost a decade ago.

Rye wrote:

Commander 598 wrote:I believe the point is that it's not selling as well as a cheap console from almost a decade ago.

More low income households, more cheap consoles sold, even ones that have long since reached saturation point over here and are considered obsolete. That's about all there is to it. Also, it's not quite appropriate to compare the 360 to the PS3, since there's 3 differently priced variants of the 360 when there's only one form of PS3. I would bet that the arcades and premiums outsell the elite.

Pelranius wrote: I wonder what the Microsoft next gen console looks like?

Lord Woodlouse wrote:More raw power, possible use of motion sensors, blu-ray compatibility. Same for the next Sony machine, l bet.

l'm more interested in what direction Nintendo goes in. l'm curious to see if they'll actually try to match Sony and Microsoft in terms of raw power.

Starglider wrote: Blu-ray is certain. Aside from playing movies, we're not ready to go to download-only yet and DVD is already becoming a serious storage limitation. A much bigger hard drive is certain, probably 1 TBish. As for more power, I'd expect 8 to 16 out-of-order cores, probably a Sandy Bridge variant, though possibly a Power 7 variant (IBM have dropped the Power 6 approach of cranking an in-order core to very high clock frequency), likely paired with a Larrabee variant unless that runs into huge unexpected deployment problems. Motion sensing controllers seems very likely given Microsoft's recent patent applications and the PR need to appear to outdo their competitors.