8 | Dec: PS3 Sales Fly Past Xbox 360 in Japan

Hmmm, MS announced 200,000 units of Blue Dragon were sold... obviously some people like it so much they bought two!

;)

Why doesn't your headline read "Wii outsells PS3 & 360!"
or are u afraid u'll upset your boyfriends @ Sony?...

I'm not sure if they sold 200,000 or expected to sell 200,000. Is the game out yet? I'm sure that 200,00 would be pre-orders.

Also not sure if the 200,000 where the bundled xbox360's with the game... I might look this up in my lunch break if i get a chance.

Because that's not really the news is it? Everyone expected that to happen. I don't think everyone expected PS3 to outsell 360 in 4 weeks.

Yeah, cause Sony loves us. Right!

The game came out today, Dec 8th, the figures in the article only go as far as the 3rd and are hardware only.

I'd heard that there were only a thousand of the bundles, so they won't make much of an impact on 360 sales, but knock-on sales from people wanting to play Blue Dragon could be large.

it was hardly a stretch of the imagination

I'm surprised it took 4 weeks and not sooner...

It's like you folks are saying the japanese are brainless zombies with a switch set to "suck on Sony's knob". They're smart consumers, they know what they're doing. Sure there's not many good games out for it, but neither did any launch except for the Nintendo ones and the Dreamcast. There's a reason Microsoft is failing over there. Microsoft is still doing well, they still have a good lineup. We'll all just have to buy a PS3 for all that Japanese gaming goodness.

give over, whatever stereotypes about the japanese exist and whether theyre true or not, it wouldnt have taken einstein to tell you that the ps3 would sell more than a relatively paltry 180,000 ps3's in 4 weeks in japan. the fanboy's (that every country has) havent even all got one yet!

The Japanese weekly sales for the PS3 are interesting;

Wk1: 81,639
Wk2: 42,099
Wk3: 32,662
Wk4: 31,436

The sales seem to be levelling off at around 30K per week, which suggests that Sony are getting about that number of units into retail each week. For comparison, the 360 has average weekly sales of about 3.5K over its lifetime.

I don't get what's interesting. The first week should logically have the most units - they would theoretically have stocked up for a few weeks before sending them out for sale, and now it's a "sell them when they get to stores" mentality. Only when Sony gets to full out manufacturing can that number begin to approach, then surpass, the initial launch.

But then again, I'm a history-type, so maybe my number crunching skills are weak.

I think its interesting that Sony is only punting out 30k units a week!

Forgive my arrogance but is that normal shipping unit numbers for a new console in demand?

It seems low-ish, but not drastically so. You generally count on them being able to make about 1,000,000 a month once they get up to speed (hence 10M Xbox 360s just over a year after launch).

They will not be up to speed with PS3 yet.

The launch was 80/20 Americas/Asia - so if they are shipping 30K a week into japan, they are prolly shipping 120K into USA - so that indicates they are producing 150K a week - pretty typical.

Sorry, I was rushed and didn't make my point very well. As DoctorDee pointed out, the interesting bit is the amount Sony are getting into retail on a weekly basis.

Sony claimed that when they were up to speed, they would be putting 1M per month into retail worldwide. Now they are doing 600K per month by DoctorDee's estimates.

I'd point out that the resupply numbers could be weighted, percentage wise, more in Japan's favour to make up for the poor launch figures there. Sony could be shipping 30K per week to Japan and maybe as little as 70K to the US, for example. That would give only 300K units per month worldwide.

Without solid weekly hardware sales for the US, of course, this is all just conjecture.

Of course, some stock my be being allocated for the European launch, but I wouldn't bet on it. That will probably start happening in late January, early February, if we are even going to get the launch in March that is.

So Sony currently have at least a 400K per month shortfall on their estimated production figures, with a major launch still to go. I find that interesting because it means they don't just have a hill to climb, they are doing it without any walking boots!

we all now that sony will do better than microsoft in japan this is because sony is from japan and microsoft is from usa but i think that every gamer on the planet is going to get two consoles in this war and itis gonig to be
ether a 360 and a wii or a ps3 and a wii so in the long run nintendo is going to win this time so how gives a s"*t