Hardware sales flutter the hearts of some console fanboys, but we find the statistics interesting nonetheless. Sony today announced its financial 2009 year results, and though the Networked Products & Services division (which includes the Games business) lost $893 million U.S. dollars, its been a boon for PS3 sales. Improved hardware sales have closed that fabled gap between Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
We had predicted a hardware sales gap between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to have dropped to around 4 million units. It turns out that we weren’t far off, with the PS3 selling 2.2 million in its last quarter to bring full year sales to 13 million and lifetime sales to 35.7 million units. Compared to Microsoft’s announced 40.2 million Xbox 360 units and that’s a gap of just 4.5 million.
The PS3 was able to catch up by 3 million units in Sony’s fiscal-2009 year (runs from May 1st 2009 to April 30th 2010), as the Xbox 360 sold 10 million units, compared to the PS3′s 13 million. The breakdown of the PS3′s fiscal year are as follows:
Fiscal 2009 Hardware sales:
Q1 – 1.1 million
Q2 – 3.2 million
Q3 – 6.5 million
Q4 – 2.2 million
Total – 13 million
The full lifetime sales run down for the PS3 by Sony’s fiscal years are as follows:
2006 – 3.5 million
2007 – 9.1 million
2008 – 10.1 million
2009 – 13.0 million
Total – 35.7 million
It’s also interesting to note that the PS3 is outselling its grandaddy the PlayStation 1, which in its fourth year (1997) had reached 32.8 million unit sales. The PS3 is still ways behind the PlayStation 2, which had sold 51.2 million by 2002.
Interestingly Sony predicts 15 million unit sales for the PS3′s 2010 fiscal year, which may predict another price-cut, or instead line up with a full year of $299 PS3 Slim sales – which only had six-months on sale during the console’s 2009 fiscal year. As for the PSP and PS2 in fiscal-2009, the former sold just 9.9 million units and the latter sold a higher than expected 7.3 million.
Damn, gap’s really closing.
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I think that MS numbers don’t mean anything really. Look at it this way.
MS have banned over 1 million consoles from going online. The people that owned these consoles traded them in and bought new 360 consoles. MS consoles have had a really bad failure figure with RROD and now the E74 error. Look at how many consoles suffered with RROD BEFORE the 3 year warranty was passed. Then look at how many people RE-BOUGHT a console because of their 360 console getting RROD.
Even with the warranty people still bought a new consoles because of RROD. People even go on to say that once MS repaired their 360 console it wasn’t long before it went wrong again. so they traded that console in to the shops, so they could buy a new 360 console.
This shows that even though MS has the bigger SHIPPED figures PS3 is in more peoples homes than 360. So really Sony has won this war now. PS3 has more consoles in the home than Microsoft, due to the bad design and bans taking place on the 360.
And now the PS Move is coming out, that alone will draw in the Wii owners and now they could play not just casual games, but the Hardcore games they wanted. Things will only get bigger and better for PS3.
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I agree. i give it till christmas…. then we’ll see the 360 fall to 3rd place
Sony’s on fire. I think that lead is going to drop further when GT5 comes out. That game is a monster.
with this news i expect a price drop from microsoft sooner than later. talk about a comeback. few years ago i was ALMOST regretting my ps3 purchase.
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I love LBDz’s reply. Kind of funny how the f***ing fanboys come out of their closets to toot Sony’s horn any chance they get. Odd how he mentions the Move but not NATAL. I guess when your head is so far up the corporate ass it’s hard to see anything else.
Play games, not systems. The PS3 rocks, the XBOX360 rocks and the Wii rocks. It’s to bad fanboys just suck c***s.
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Pete, we appreciate your contribution, but please keep your bad language to a minimum. Thanks.
@Pete
He’s just saying look at some of the trick Microsoft is doing to keep that lead over ps3. Two days before one of the biggest games of the year drops, you decide to ban 1 million consoles online feature. Think about they didn’t kill the gamertags, they just banned the consoles. This means they knew they were modded 360 but they chose to wait when a big game is released to do it. Don’t get me wrong though, strategically, it’s a great move. Also they have the highest failure rate out of all three consoles. It’s confirmed that Sony has overtaken Microsoft in Europe, which is what mattered really. Sony has Japan and Microsoft has America. Sony now holds both Japan and Europe over Microsoft ,who only has America. Now it’s just a matter of time ,because the lead can only get smaller from here.
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Hats off to Microsoft, it was good run to get out there first … Albeit with a shoddy design that sounds like a vacuum cleaner and dies with the RROD. But hey you have Aaron Fatberg as a marketing guy !!! hehe
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@ Death2494
Thanks for seeing it my way. ;o)
Also to Pete, if you see past the Fanboi BS you’ll see everything i said is true.? I own all consoles, but the facts remain. If 360 didn’t suffer with RROD or E 74 Error they would not have sold the amount of consoles shown today. Or if MS didn’t ban consoles from playing online, they would not have sold more consoles due to it would they. Now really this shows that PS3 has the bigger in home base compared to 360. >?
Also despite a lower installed base, software sales on the PS3 have outstripped that of the Xbox 360 in the fiscal-2009 year. The PlayStation 3 enjoyed 115.6 million software sales in the Sony’s 2009-fiscal year (runs from May 1st 2009 to April 30th 2010), this performance was better than that of the Xbox 360, which achieved 103.1 million software sales. This may look like Fanboi talk, but it’s fact, NOT fanboi BS.?
http://www.playstationuniversity.com/ps3-software-sales-outstrip-xbox-360s-ps3-attach-rate-up-to-8-1-3807/
“MS have banned over 1 million consoles from going online. The people that owned these consoles traded them in and bought new 360 consoles.”
lol wut??
Little Big Planet 2 and GT5 is going to sky rocket their sales. Then games like The Last Gaurdian and Final Fantasy Versus XIII are going to come around and boost it even more, just using those games as examples, but very good examples in my opinion.