Finally Sony has a winner with their new slim Playstation 3 outselling the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 in the US market.
Finally Sony has a winner with their new slim Playstation 3 outselling the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 in the US market.
Both GFK and Sony Computer Entertainment in Australia have refused to reveal local sales numbers which indicates that if Sony had outsold the Wii they would be out bragging about it. Sony’s PlayStation 3, for the first time in the United States since its 2006 release, was the top-selling console. Sony, which saw PS3 sales more than double to 491,800. The big difference is that the console is selling for A$321 Vs $499 in Australia.
“If they didn’t have the price cut, it [being the top-selling console] wouldn’t have happened,” says Wedbush Morgan analyst Edward Woo.
Despite falling 33 percent, Nintendo Wii was second with 462,800 units and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was third with a 1.6 percent increase to 352,600 units.
There is also good news for the gaming industry which after six straight months of declining sales, the video game industry posted a 1 percent increase to $1.28 billion in September, according to the NPD Group.
Hardware sales fell 6 percent, software sales rose 5 percent, and video game accessories rose 2 percent.
Overall, hardware sales are still down 16 percent compared to 2008 and software sales down 12 percent. However, console price cuts and new games are expected to boost sales during the 2009 holiday season.
“One percent growth in this extremely challenging economy is pretty positive,” says Sony America’s chief executive Jack Tretton. “To be talking about a sector of the economy that’s growing at all is certainly an endorsement of the success the category has had.”
