Truth Blurry: Sony PS3 or Microsoft Xbox 360 winning Europe?
Filed under: Gaming, Sony Playstation 3, Xbox 360 | By: Daniel
Posted on: May 10, 2008 | 51 Comments
With many tracking services around keeping an eye on games console sales, you would think the truth would not be blurry on who is the winner in Europe, but it is. The Sony PS3 was said to be winning Europe and we reported a couple of days ago that Sony’s David Reeves confirmed over five million Playstation 3’s have been sold across Europe, he also said the PS3 has outsold the Xbox 360 for 6 months (since October 2007). Now we have heard Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg deny these figures, they have said that the “Xbox 360 has an undeniable strength in North America” and that it had “over a 1-million-unit lead across Europe”, he based these figures on the sell-through from Chart Track and GfK.
Its strange how the two brands are coming up with different figures, although Sony did not deny Microsoft’s lead in the United States, in fact Sony did say they could take North America given more time. What we got to think about here are not how many units is sold from each games console, but more on what they are used for. I know a few people that have bought the Sony PS3 as a cheap Blu-ray player, while those that buy the Xbox 360, really only use it for games.
So the figures we would want to see here are how many games are owned per user on the Xbox 360 and the Sony PS3 as an average. This will give us an idea of who is really winning, which games console gets more games bought for it and played more. We can look at the unofficial numbers for VGChartz, if we are talking just units then they have the Playstation 3 at 5.4 million unit sales outside of North America and Japan, while the Xbox 360 is said to be 6.4 million. This is still confusing as we could see other countries like Australia mixed into them figures.
Source: Read
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Whether or not the PS3 is ahead or behind in Europe, it has been ‘winning’ in terms of week-on-week hardware sales for the last six months or so. Only a matter of time before it passes the 360 - if indeed it hasn’t done so already.
The US is a different story. Sales have been pretty much neck and neck this year, so It’ll take much longer to catch the 360 there.
As attach rates go, if the 14-16 month head start for the 360 is discounted, I believe they’re pretty much neck and neck on that count as well.
How can Sony be winning Europe when they are being trounced by the Wii? That Sony and Microsoft are so excited about second place is amusing.
Agreed Brick.
360 owners are very quick to jump on the ‘attach’ rates, but mysteriously forget that they had a 16 month lead time in which people were buying games and upping the attach rate.
@Flip
Its either A : They don’t view the Wii as ‘next gen’ or a ‘real’ gaming machine. I own one as well as my PS3, and I DO think it is a gaming machine.
Or B : They’re so far behind, whats the point in bringing it into thier press releases.
Its not a good press release if you say ‘well yep we beat the xbox 360 but the wii still has us bent over and taking it’
I guess C could be a combination of both.
These are the same people that told us to buy HD-DVD.
I choose NOT to believe them.
Thanks.
PS3 is amazing. Buy one and see for yourself!
funny Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg does not say “they are wrong, we have sold X numbers of xbox 360 in europe”
if they are 1 million ahead, why Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg does not just say “we have sold more than 6 millions xbox in europe”
maybe cause they have not, and talk about numbers from some 3rd sales trackers, cant he give a call to the sales deparment and ask how many xbox have sold in europe
and about the 10 millions plus units sold in america, you know every RROD xbox that microsoft exchange for a new one are tracked as a sale.
so i guess they have sold 17 millions of consoles worldwide, but only about 12 are in costumers hands, the rest are garbage, well, more accurate in garbage
we know that before the new design chip in the last xbox, microsoft cant give a reliable console to costumers, thats the reason they were just re-shufling consoles the first year, now they can give a more reliable one, and count those as a new sale, besides microsoft already made the check to expend 1 billion dollars buying xbox 360 for the next 3 years, last year when they extended the warranty and recognized they built and sell a faulty console (im still waiting someone to sue them, just take their words to a court, to bad i dont live in US for sue myself)
Sony are clearly winning everywhere outside the US. The PS3 has overtaken the 360 in the EU despite being on sale for 16 months less meaning its selling over twice as quickly.
@ Josh
Even though I don’t think the Wii should count as a gaming console, it’s doing rather well considering the games look like crap. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Wii Bowling, and anytime I drink with friends that I’m not the first person turning on my friends’ Wii to play. But other than getting drunk and playing games, I’ve never been able to get into the games I’ve played on it (SSBB, Mario Galaxy, Zelda, Wii Play, etc) when I’m sober. The Wii is like the fat chick at the bar at closing time; you don’t want it unless you’re drunk and nobody talks about it the next day.
Everybody is always throwing around Sony’s and Microsoft’s “Attach Rate” without fully examining the average attach rate per month for the consoles’ life cycles. I know, there is no flawless formula that will represent a these numbers, but if you take the attach rate (AtRt) and divide is by the number of months (Ms) the console has been available it should show you which console owners are actually buy games more often (AtRt/Ms = Winner)
I pulled each console’s release date from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org
I used Gamer Blorge’s attach rate figures from April 27th, 2008.
http://gamer.blorge.com/2008/04/27/xbox-360-leads-software-attach-rate-even-the-wii-beats-ps3/
As per Wikipedia, the X-Box 360 was released November 22nd of 2005, which means it’s been available for 2 year 5 and a half months (29.5 months) and has an attach rate of 7.5. The Playstation 3 was released on November 17th of 2006, which translates in to 1 year and almost 6 months (18 months) who’s attach rate is 4.6. The Wii was released on December 8th, 2006 (17 months) with a current attach rate of 5.3. Now to put the formula to the test.
We’ll start with the 360. 7.5 divided by 29.5 = 0.2542 (AtRt / Ms = 0.2542, or 1 game purchased every 4 months). A very respectable figure.
Now for the Playstation3. 4.6 divided by 18 = 0.2556 (AtRt / Ms = 0.2556, which is near identical to the 360)
And finally for the Wii. 5.3 divided by 17 = 0.3118 (AtRt / Ms = 0.3118)
So, lets forget who has sold MORE games and focus on which company is selling more games per month on average; this will show which console is selling better on a month to month average.
To put this in order
First Place
Wii: 0.3118
Second Place
PS3: 0.2556
Third Place
360: 0.2542
Those give you a semi-accurate evaluation to how many games each console owner buys on average since the date they were released.
Sony’s David Reeves gave the media the impression that Sony had overtaken total 360 sales in Europe which isn’t the case. Personally I dont think David did this on purpose because he confirmed five million Playstation 3’s have been sold (in Europe). 6 1/2 million 360’s have been sold in Europe and it’s obvious that the 360 is still leading at this point in the region. However, it is true that the PS3 has been leading week to week sales since the big PS3 price cut in October last year.