PS3 won't beat Wii until 2011, forecasts analyst

This year will see another gruelling sales showdown between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as they battle it for hardcore gamers' cash. However, the PS3 is eventually expected to become the dominant console. Market watcher iSuppli this week predicted that the PS3 will sell 10m units globally during 2008, helping to put it far …

[Olly]

Downward Install Base?

"more people will be chucking out old machines than there are latecomers buying new ones"

So presumably they are assuming that no-one will sell their old machine on Ebay creating a secondary use install base of some kind?

Sounds like Paris logic to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaand...

...cue Liam and Mark, the resident Sony fanboys, with more "Wii isn't next-gen" / "Wii is for girls/kids/grannies" comments:

[Lord Baphomet]

Silly

Of course, it's rather silly to simply extrapolate points on a graph, and claim that this is how consumers will behave. A quick straw-poll I've just conducted around the office, shows that the glister is wearing thin on the Wii; apparently the games are quite poor, and very difficult to play. It seems that it's a toy best suited for parties and small children.

And, unless Sony sort out their dreadful online experience, it's doubtful if they'll be able to convince a community increasingly interested in such things that their product is better than the xbox.

I hate to say it, but I think that MS have got it right with the xbox, and although I do own a PS3, I won't ever get a Wii.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll happen quicker

The PS3 will get there sooner. Friends with Wiis are getting bored with them already and want to get a PS3. Even my Dad wants to get a PS3 to watch Blu-ray.

I'm going to get rid of my Xbox as the HD drive is rubbish and has no HDMI.

The Wii could have got to a million consoles far quicker if they'd got some on the shelves.

[Anonymous Coward]

That Long?????

The PS3 sales will depend on the blu-ray/HD-DVD war.

IF Blu-ray win, expect to see sales of PS3 to soar. Its a good system, that plays Blu-ray well, and firmware upgradable like most new blu-ray players.

I own a Wii as well as a PS3 both good fun. As El reg shows the loser will be microsoft.

[John Savard]

Too Late

According to a recent news item, revised models of global climate change now predict instead of taking 40 years, the Greenland ice cap may melt by the year 2012.

So if the PS3 becomes the top game console in 2011, that will leave it with a very small period of supremacy before the fall of civilization.

[Paul Talbot]

Wii2?

So, from the looks of things the PS3 won't overtake the Wii until after people start chucking it out in favour of the next iteration of the Wii (which will presumably include all the HD / surround sound with tweaked controls all the fanboy bashers have been after). By which time the XBox 720 (or whatever it's called) will probably have been out for 6 months or so.

Does this just mean we'll be seeing the same battle again in a few years time between Xbox/Wii2/PS4?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wii will go on forever...

Upcoming Wii titles and addons.

Pony Stroking

Injured bird game

Dolly hair and makeup

Stair Master - with USB stair attachment

Chair master - with USB chair attachment

Whack-A-Chav

Poking Simulator

Online Soggy Biscuits

Donkey sanctuary manager 2008

[Ian]

Bluray not necessarily an advantage long term

"IF Blu-ray win, expect to see sales of PS3 to soar. Its a good system, that plays Blu-ray well, and firmware upgradable like most new blu-ray players."

Whilst the Wii will never become a media player, the 360 has the download marketplace which has already gone international to quite a few countries. I'd argue 3 years down the road that'll be more important than physical media capabilities so Sony need to implement a decent international video store to compete there more than anything.

It's also worth noting Microsoft has mentioned they can just as easily release a Bluray addon drive, and as such presumably a built in Bluray drive as the hardware becomes cheap enough.

As a a result of these factors I'm not sure the Bluray advantage really exists long term. What Sony really need is decent games, something they still have quite a shortage of. Arguably their biggest advantage however is the large PS2 user base just mindlessly jumping to the PS3 when it becomes cheap enough without investigating the other two companies offerings. If anything I'd argue this is the underlying reason for these long term predictions.

[Tim]

Re: It'll happen quicker & That Long?????

"The PS3 will get there sooner. Friends with Wiis are getting bored with them already and want to get a PS3. Even my Dad wants to get a PS3 to watch Blu-ray"

I know no one who's expressed any desire to get a PS3. Only those I know with one are hard core male 12 to 20-something gamers. Almost everyone else (friends, both male and female, their parents and their granny) has a Wii and finds it fun.

"IF Blu-ray win, expect to see sales of PS3 to soar"

Not a chance. It's way too expensive.

This whole fantasy of Blu-Ray becoming such a runaway success makes two assumptions...

1. That Joe Public sees Blu-Ray as such a clear advantage over DVD, as DVD was over VHS. Plain and simple fact is Joe Public does not see this. DVD vs VHS was simple. Shiny disc... or tape. Quality was always secondary, and with HD quality really requires a 40" or higher size telly. Average TV size in the UK is more likely around 21" (tucked away in the corner).

2. That Joe Public will be able to buy a player for £20 in ASDA. This is never going to happen with the PS3, and fact is there is no viable alternative or any sign of cheap Chinese players on the horizon, or even 10 years down the line (especially when there is low demand). In fact, the PS2 is still outselling the PS3 and it's still around £100 !!

Really Blu-Ray missed a trick by not convincing Nintendo to bundle a player with the Wii. The market for the Wii *is* Joe Public, unlike the PS3. That's why the Wii sells bucket loads. It's why Blu-Ray will never be much more than a geek niche market product.

And one more thing. By 2011 there will be new consoles out. PS3 will be old technology by then, and Nintendo will have something better (or at least more fun).

Paris? Even Paris probably has a Wii.

[Mark]

PS3 will sell more, quicker. Mark my words..

Well considering PS3 sold 10.5 million last year, and Blu-ray is now the accepted HD format, I would expect to see PS3 sales ~18million this year. I think iSuppli have got it wrong.

I expect the PS3 catalog like Final Fanstasy, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid (all PS3 exclusives), along with the other big PS3 exclusive hitters, and the raft of multi-platform titles, to seriously accelearate PS3 uptake. At the same time, I expect the 360's lack of Blu-ray (or HD DVD for games), and therefore the limitations of DVD9, the lack of standard HDD, and the serious reliability issues with the 360, to drastically neuter it's growth.

I expect the crossover of culuminative sales to happen late 2008, which considering the year headstart of the 360, it quite bad news for Microsoft.

The Wii factor, well it's suprised everyone, selling more units than tracy island, tickle me elmo and cabbage patch kids combined. But how long can they continue to sell a rehashed gamecube, purely on the fake desirability factor, rather than real substance? The Wii sales show that most Wii owners rarely venture outside Wii sports to buy additional games, and I suspect many of those Wii's for the new family gamer demographic are simply sat in the cupboard, gathering dust next to the monopoly set, ready for when grandma comes over next Xmas.

[david gomm]

hmm, something fishy here

this graph assumes that :

Wii will get to a point where no-one buys it as its obsolete

Sony will continue to capitalise on their blu-ray advantage and will provide the longevity of their platform.

MS will fail to shift from HD DVD to blu-ray, allowing Sony to continue to be the sole console with capabilities based upon the winner of the DVD standards war.

Personally i don't believe things will turn out this way and thats why this graph is screwed up, a couple of observations to back that up :

- Nintendo have already announced and will soon be shipping the Wii Fit, showing that they will continue to use their console to push at the horizontal boundaries of the coneol marketplace, I reckon they'll continue to do this and will win big on sales as a result.

- MS have already publicy scaled back their commitment to HD DVD and I beleive they'll have a blu-ray option within 6-12 months.

I beleive Sony will aggressively push the PS3 and it will, for a time enjoy a 'blu-ray advantage over the 360, enhancing it's sales curve. I do also beleive that hardcore gamers will find the Wii doesn't offer the performance to play the type of titles many of them need but these will represent blips on the sales curve rather than make a material and long lived effect on it.

[Mark]

Chart is BS.

How does the Wii and 360 number DECREASE, if it's culumative numbers?

I can understand the 360 numbers going down, what with consoles overheating and burning down houses/killing spouses. But the Wii is pretty reliable.

How can the number of Wii consoles DECREASE between 2010 and 2011????

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the other contenders?

You forgot to take into account the sales of Infineon's Phantom!

[bluesxman]

@ Ian

"Whilst the Wii will never become a media player, the 360 has the download marketplace"

I concede the latter point to a degree and I grant you that Nintendo have stated that the current Wii hardware can't support DVD playback (whether I believe them or not is a whole other issue).

But how can you say with any measure of certainty that some future Wii software upgrade (or third party disc, more likely) won't allow you to hook a USB HDD to the USB port and/or stream XviD (etc) content from a network attached storage location, be it PC or whatever?

It's not like it won't play video at all even now ... it certainly plays video files I've recorded on my DigiCam, so (hopefully) it's not going to be a giant leap...

[JP]

Make a theory, plot graph to show results...

This is just complete BS. Assuming that the drop in user base in 2010-2011 is because the next generation of consoles are coming out:

1. Why does this not affect the PS3? Because is so dang good it's already, actually PS3.5?

2. If the user bases are dipping, THAT MEANS PEOPLE ARE BUYING THE NEW CONSOLES! Which makes the PS3 "dominance" of the obsolete generation moot.

3. Why, when the other consoles have shown a slight dip in year-to-year user-base growth, is the projected PS3 growth linear??

COMPLETE BS. Pengu, because his 360 would never overheat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here he goes again

I see Tim is back with his anti-sony, anti-bluray sulks because he was betting HD-DVD would win and is now left with almost new hardware that is already obsolete.

No point trying to point out to him he is wrong. Many people have shown him proof that he is misguided, yet he always tries (and fails) to come back with lame arguments that convieniently ignore the evidence he has been given.

[Giles Jones]

Next Wii

If the Wii has proven anything, it's that you can change the rules.

The Wii is different in many ways, control mechanism, specification and the business model.

The Wii isn't a loss maker, it doesn't need HD graphics and the controller makes other consoles seem like relics from the Megadrive era.

The next Nintendo product can only improve things. It's design and demographic is different to other consoles. I'm not a games machine for the traditional gamer.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: It'll happen quicker

Ha ha ha ha. Been a while since I've seen such basic logic. To translate "In my very small sample size, I've asked and they want a PS3 - therefore PS3 will sell very well and quickly".

To be fair, I'm guessing the same sort of logic was applied to the original analysis.

[badministrator]

Wii2

Paul Talbot - It occurs to me, surely if Wii is a number one, then the Wii2 as you call it will be called the Nintendo P00

Yeah, i know, yes i brought a coat, i'm getting it now, get your hands off me.

[Eric Jones]

Who knows...not the analysts

These guys have been wrong on just about every short term prediction for this generation, how can I even begin to take their long term plans seriously.

And as for the anecdotal Wii stories and no core gamer stories:

Resident Evil - Wii Edition sold over 1 million

Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles - 950,000

Metroid Prime - over 1 million

Guitar Hero Wii - over 1 million

Smash Brothers Brawl - over 1 million (in 3 weeks, Japan only)

No More Heroes - over 100,000 in 3 weeks in the US.

Mario Galaxy - over 5 million

Coming to the Wii this year -

Mario Kart (will easily sell over 1 million)

Rock Band (this summer)

COD5

Rygar

Bully SE

Okami

I've got all 3 consoles, so I can't wait for MGS and Resistance 2, Gears of War 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

But for those who are saying that there's nothing to play on the Wii, they either don't know (cause Nintendo games are advertised for shite), they're lying or they really only like mini-games.

I think it's going to be Wii for years and then the Wii two will take it up a notch.

[Tim]

Re: Here he goes again

@ *Anonymous Coward*

Nothing misguided about facing facts. I accept Blu-Ray has "won". I don't accept the fanboy fantasy that Blu-Ray will replace DVD shortly, and there's no evidence to suggest it. I also accept that HD DVD would never stand a chance of doing the same.

However, like most HD DVD owners, I'm in touch with reality (including accepting "losing").

Meanwhile however my "obsolete" player is happy playing plenty of HD movies in perfect quality for a fraction of the price of the current Blu-Ray option, and has access to 300+ others that keep me going for years until Blu-Ray is finally finalised and priced right with proper standalone players. I may even buy Blu. Still I'm not as daft as to assume it will replace DVD.

What do the trends show? Blu-Ray and HD DVD *combined* have about 2% of the movie media market (DVD having 98%) and prediction of maybe 3% in a year. It would take at least 30 million PS3s sold in the UK alone in the next few years to even approach the point where it could take over DVD. Nothing, absolutely nothing, shows any trend towards this.

As I say, face facts. £20 Blu-Ray players in ASDA and everyone owning DVD in 5 or 10 years is just not a reality. DVD only achieved what it did because it was just night and day between DVD and VHS, and more importantly a disc is just so more convenient than a bulky tape. That isn't the case with HD formats (Blu or HD DVD).

Going to 20 years, I'd say without the runaway success in the short term, almost certainly there will be another option by then. Scoff at downloads, but consider just how much has happened to the Internet in the space of 10 years. We were using 56k modems 10 years ago! Not that future HD movie watching may come via the Internet or in the form of traditional downloads anyway.

[thomas newton]

@ Tim - 'Quality was always secondary'

er, what? the difference in quality was precisely what spurred me to change to dvd - *and* duplicate my existing vhs collection on dvd. if quality wasnt the issue, then why have people bought dvd titles they already have on tape?

[Dirk Vandenheuvel]

In 2011 people still care?

Will people still care for PS3 in 2011? Surely the next Wii and 360 will be showing their colors.

[Phil]

@Tim

Well I'm 43 and my wife brought me a PS3 for Christmas.

My house now owns 360, PS3 and Wii. By far the most popular with my 14 and 16yr olds is the 360, this is almost entirely due to the way MS have implemented their xbox Live system.

Have been very impressed with the PS3 and if Sony do sort out their PSN so that it's as user friendly as Xbox live, I think they're onto a winner.

With regards to the Wii, I ordered one for Christmas 2006, finally got it in Feb 2007. Was disappointed as to how quickly my kids got bored with it. Brought them a few wii games for Christmas this year, my son spent a few hours on Mario, but the draw of an online battle on Halo or COD4 was too much and the Wii hasn't been on since. It is a fun machime, but in my opinion it's the sort of machine you use at a party or Christmas day when the families round.

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2 cents

The Wii has a good batch of games that are refreshing to play. The PS3 interests me for two things media playback and GT HD. The 360 would interest me if it wasn't so damn unreliable. As for these charts what a pile of crock.

Sony is locked into PS3 making a loss on each one whilst MS and Nintendo are free to develop the next next gen machines 2011 is a long way off and I think the PS3 will look slightly better than the PS2 compared to the Xbox 720 relatively speaking and Wii 2 will probably be around the performance of the PS3 but with the added advantage or a third party developer base that is used to the new control style they've developed and more precise controls.

Finally I am a hard core gamer however I don't understand the whole raft of games released on PS3/360 that would be better suited to a keyboard and mouse PC setup. However the Wii shows real promise for future hard core games once the next gen of it comes out.

I expect to see Nintendo dominate for the current and next release of consoles bar some MS innovation.

[Andy Bright]

I have all 3

And I don't believe it's possible to generate a graph that predicts the sales of any product beyond 6 months.

Too many things can and will change. The recession the US is enjoying will steadily get worse as investors realise we're only on the tip of the housing/foreclosure meltdown. The most ridiculous loans, given with the most lax underwriting standards ever, are not due to reset to higher interest rates for at least another year.

In the US they intend to send everyone that pays some sort of income tax a $300-$1200 check to stimulate the economy. The people that actually need the money will be getting the smallest amounts, probably around $600 per household, and all that will do is remind them how badly off they are. If someone thinks they're going to use those checks to pay anything other than utility bills or their mortgage/rent, they're living in a fantasy world.

So anything that predicts the sale of luxury items beyond this summer is garbage. Consoles are bought by two groups. The 21-35 yr olds that grew up with gaming, and parents. Parents that lose their jobs will cut consoles off their shopping lists immediately. My guess is that would be at least 1/2 the market gone.

And if the banks go into meltdown in the US, because people will walk from homes rather than waste time trying to sell at a price that won't even pay back the mortgage - then any country that has strong financial links with the US (pretty much anywhere with money) will also see their economies go downhill fast.

By the time 2011 comes, people will be cheering the end of the worst recession in history, and maybe that will be the time they go out to buy consoles to celebrate. I doubt it though, they're more likely to want to get in on a foreclosed-property fire sale.

[sa]

I wouldn't bet on PS3

The Wii device incorporates next-generation technology that hasn't even begun to be fully elaborated upon, including the ability to immerse the user into a moving frame of reference and other modes of virtual reality that are both engaging and practical in implementation: http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/

By the time PS3 gets its act together -- in what? THREE YEARS?? -- Nintendo will have a second generation Wii with some kind of cheaper HD disc playing capability.

[Highlander]

@Tim

12-20-something is who you think buy PS3? I have news for you, the average age of gamers is in the mid 30's. You know, people with jobs and disposable incomes. Since PS3 is the most expensive (arguably not so) of the current consoles, one wonders where 12 year olds would get the cash to buy one. School and college students 12-20 something) are not notoriously flush with cash.

Actually the way you described the category of gamer you want us to believe buys PS3 sounded more like a description of the typical Halo player on XBL.

Blu-Ray and PS3 are following the mold of the rather successful PS2 quite well in many ways. Blu-Ray will continue to be a boon for PS3 through 2008. Only when stand alone players fall below about $150 will the halo effect diminish. By that time the PS3 will have dropped in price again, and be much more attractive from a price, performance and functionality point of view without simply relying on the 'best/cheapest Blu-Ray player' marketing line.

[Highlander]

@Ian

Blu-Ray will continue to be a factor through the life of this generation of console. Broadband uptake is still not 100%, nor even close in most countries. Uptake of the new, and experimental, high speed broadband services will be patchy at best for a few years. Until there is universally available, super fast broadband, downloading movies, especially movies in a true 720p or 1080p format will be utterly impractical. Optical discs are a very convenient mechanism for distribution. People like having the disc in their hands rather than an email saying they can download or stream.

Download services and local storage in home theaters has a ways to go in order to catch up with the sheer data requirements of HD. A respectable HD library would saturate a 1TB drive in fairly short order, I don't know many people who have 1TB drives in their PCs, never mind their home entertainment systems.

Downloads and flash storage are clearly an important technology, but it's highly optimistic to suggest that within 3 years it will supplant optical disc technology. A decade maybe, but that depends on a lot of investment in broadband infrastructure and a couple of orders of magnitude increase in flash capacity and similarly dramatic price reductions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wii doesn't care

The fact is that none of the analysts correctly predicted the Wii sucess, furthermore they didn't pick up on the fact that Nintendo was ditching the old NES business model, (still the core of Sony's stategy) despite the fact that Iwata and others were banging on about gaming reaching a crisis point and how things would have to change. I therfore would take any prediction with a large dose of salt- even if the graphs are pretty

Of course the Wii is a slightly improved Gamecube with a fancy controller -that was exactly Nintendo's intention and it means that they are making a packet on every console as well as on content (same as a certain white music player). As for the future it hard to see Sony recovering the lost gound as Nintendo have frightening scope for price cuts should the Wiii start to falter, and expect Nintendo to dominate the casual/ family market. That my hardcore friends is where the money is - think Disney.

[Jach]

I have a question.

What exactly constitutes a hard-core gamer? I've lived off Nintendo only (I believe only the Genesis offered any games that interested me (which I can now get on the Wii Virtual Console), and the other systems are way more expensive), and I've spent many hours in front of the t.v., all at once and in increments. Heck, I've spent 18 hours straight to complete some games, on more than one occasion.

What does doubling as a media player have to do with being a hard core gamer? What do graphics have to do with being a hard core gamer? I'm sure there were hard core gamers in the NES and original DOOM eras. What do rated-M games have to do with it? I'm just very confused... Probably as much as Paris.

[Tim]

@Thomas

"if quality wasnt the issue, then why have people bought dvd titles they already have on tape?"

Space.

Though it's far more likely a case that "the majority" who bought DVDs, never bought many VHS and wouldn't have been replacing DVD. Most rented VHS. The sales market was huge with DVD though, mostly down to convenience and eventually down to price competing with the rental market.

Of course us movie geeks will have bought for quality also, but that wasn't the biggest driving force for moving from VHS to DVD. I have to admit a big reason for me buying DVDs was to clear out the shelves and make more space.

The move to HD is more tricky when most people have (or will have) TVs that are a little on the small size to really make it worth going HD at all.

Not that I'm knocking HD. I love it. But if we're talking Joe Public and their little 28" telly (if that) in the corner of the room, I can see how they might think "what's the point". I mean, with a 40" TV I find sometimes HD isn't as staggeringly day and night as I assumed it would be, especially compared to upscalers.

Mind you, JP just thinks he/she has HD because the telly says "HD Ready".