Research & Markets: Sony PlayStation 3 is Expected to Win the Console War with an Install Base of Around 75 Million Globally b

This brief considers the impact of next-generation consoles on the online games sector, assessing whether online services will reach their mass market potential.

Scope of this title:
- Provides an analysis of primary drivers for online games use as well as for the adoption of the next-generation of video game consoles.
- Highlights game types and principle players within the evolving video games market.
- Addresses current growth trends in the console and handheld markets across major geographic sectors.

[BIadestarX]

Zzzzzzz

[Scrumptious]

Tools.

[UrbanJabroni]

"Xbox 360 is close on the heels of the PS3 overall"

Could we have a winner for worst analyst in history?

[True Gamer]

When an analyst predicts the Xbox 360 is going to win, you all bash the PS3.

When an analyst predicts the PS3 is going to win, you all bash the analyst.

Make up your minds!

[grifter024]

True Gamer.. Those two things are not the same thing are they?????? Bashing the ps3 is totally different then Bashing the analyst . LOL ...Its kinda funny how everything is going so well for the ps3 in this article. "Xbox holds an early lead but PS3 is expected to head the market" When shall we see this heading of the market?? HAHA Hopefully soon ..I suppose."The handheld market is no longer a one horse race" Umm I think it still is.. The PSP is no longer the "Dream" handheld it tried to be and take out nintendo. I Dont even hear anymore about umd movies. There is so much hype and "aparrent" information that sony is going to preform a miracle and win all console wars. This might happen but it probably wont happen since it isnt doing good now but who knows .. Just forget everything analysists say since they really dont know what they talk about anytime.

[MicroGamer]

has to average nearly 25 million a year for the next 3 years to hit that number. PS2 is only averaging 18-19 million a year over it's entire life. No way is PS3 going to top PS2 sales figures with that price and the bad perception the public has of Sony right now.

[Thugbot187]

I bet they were paid by Sony to keep the hype alive. Well fanboys will love to hear this.

[kornbeaner]

this really all to much. PS3 is gonna lose, 360 is gonna win and nobody really talks about the wii. This is a system who's company pervious offering was a huge joke. Nobody even gave the wii a chance until it hit the market. Now look at it. If the numbers hold true this little system is gonna dominate this generations console war. But no, everybody rides it off. It's still to early to tell. Wii and PS3 have 2 months in the market with no more then 1 must-have title. The 360 sold but it didn't have anything next-gen to compete against and was still getting it's ass handed to it by the PS2. So we have to just wait and see. Both the Wii and PS3 are gonna get more must-have, must-play games. And the 360 is gonna add to what it already has. Holiday season 07 is gonna be the time when we can see what the trend is gonna be for the this console race.

[MicroGamer]

Zelda, Excite Truck and Rayman Rayving Rabbids are three that are worth owning a Wii for. Elebits and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz are also going to sell well, IMO. The kids will go for the cartoon adaptations of Spongebob and Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and the animated film based titles like Cars and Happy Feet. It's hard to pick out any game from the Wii launch lineup and say "This is a truly awful game" or "This one will NEVER sell", although some people are having problems with the control system in Red Steel, although I think that's more attributable to the learning curve of the new controllers. I'll wait until I have played it before I make a judgement.

[Bebedora]

Speculations is fun....I guess. But getting payed for it - whop-tido.

There's lies, lies, lies and statistics...and analysts.

It will end up being +20milion more by 2010. Why? Because I am an analyst.

[gnothe1]

your correct my friend!!sony does need to sell about 25 million system a year to reach that number an right now the the Ps3 aint looking to hot!!I think those numbers are gonna be higher than that considering the games they have out now just aint moving the system.well all know that the end of the year is the biggest selling time of the year an there gonna have to sell about 23 million ps3's by december to try an make that prediction an I dont see it happening at 600!! now if they droped the price to 299 to 349 then yeah they'll hi it easy!

[calderra]

Yeah, how the hell are they going to sell 25 million systems/year!?

Even Wii isn't remotely close to that.

[r1000]

It can go

8 million USA
8 million Japan
8 million Europe
1 million misc Australia etc...

there's your 24-25 million a year... LOL thats how it could do it...

But seriously... Unlike all the other "gamers" who posted above me... who somehow became "WALL STREET PROFESSIONALS" with comments like "SONY MUST HAVE PAID THEM"??? Seriously just saying that out loud sounds stupid as hell.... How would Sony go about paying wall street analysts.. seems a little far fetched....You people are dumb...

I don't know if this is true or not, it's just a prediction....

-Analyst say 360 will win.... xboys oh thats great, these analysts are the best and they are right...

-those same "Analyst" say ps3 will win... xboys oh thats just stupid, they got paid, it will never happen blah blah....

lets try to be "RATIONAL" people....

[DonSqueak]

...Wall Street Analysts don't get paid by Sony. Wall Stree Analysts are dumb. They don't have thze feeling for their stuff. Their misinformed on a regular basis. They probably got some estimates from somebody who can't estimate and then wrote a little piece without counter-checking if that is at all possible.

[Dreamworker]

maybe 10-15 million maybe

[nice_cuppa]

i love the fanboy clicking the cool marker because its sony.......did you read it before you voted cool ?

now you think about it dont you feel silly ?

so the point is ps3 would need to sell better than ps2 and it aint selling as good as wii or 360 so.............woops !

this analist should be ridiculed, get no more grants and loose whatever standing he had in the analist community.

[techie]

I can see ps3 doing 16million this year. another 2million between usa and japan until march (shipped/sold - doesn't matter - microsoft's 10.4million was shipped). In march with the launch in oz and europe 2million, then with motorstorm and others is another 3million in US and japan. MGS4 - 4million worldwide. Christmas 4million worldwide.

Makes sense. But then again I can see xbox 360 doing exactly the same with the release of Halo 3 and other great games, plus they're price reduction - meaning it will be 17million to ps3 by year end 2007 and 25million to xbox360...

[Adriokor]

Some comments annoy me so much, get a better job and stop complaining about the price, 600 is nothing these days for an electronic device....pleasures cost.

Get off your Fanboy's wagon and stop bashing people who analyze market trends for a living, who are you to make a better decision just because you own a product and you want it to do well?

[DonSqueak]

I'm bashing this particular analyst on the grounds of arguments, not because I want anything to do well. This analyst has no foundation for whatever he comes up with, that's his problem. He does that for a living, you know there's a lot of incompetent people doing something for a living, because the people who they talk to happen to be incompetent as well and keep paying them. Check all the facts on the Internet you can find about the particular topic he's writing about and you will easily see that this analysis has no foundation whatsoever.

[Dreamworker]

600$ is a lot in china. i think 600$ is a lot for a gameconsole without good games. you can see how important the price is in sales numbers from the wii.

[power of Green]

Tell that to the walmart casual masses that gave Sony it's dominance buy snatching up PS2's when the price was $150 and lower. What a dumb ass thing to say. Timing, DVD jive, and lack of competition caused the PS fluke of success.

[Boon Tarkas]

By 2010 we'll all be playing the XBOX 720, or waiting on the PS4

[power of Green]

.

[pshizle]

its pure logic 360 has already won!!!

[Dusk]

up in the air. Sure. It looks the worst for Sony at this point, but they can still get it together. One thing is for sure, though. There is absolutely no way the PS3 will do even remotely as good as the PS2, let alone surpass it. The only way the analyst's prediction could come true is that the PS3 would have to crush the sales of the PS2. Sorry, not this time. Not at that price. Not with this competition. Not with Sony's lack of funds. Not with Sony's reputation falling rapidly.

The absolute best case for Sony at this point is to edge out the competition and at least retain dominance. Considering all of the horrible decisions Sony has made for the PS3 up to this point, that would still be a great feat.

[blackmagic]

Best comment in this whole thread.

[FFVIIFan]

that Sony will lead sales by 2010. I'm just saying possible, don't spaze on me. But it for certain wont be with 75 million.

[sevenout]

75 MILLION installed in less than three years, when the president of Sony said not to expect any price cuts anytime within the next two years? Historically, the PS2 took 565 days to reach a meager $100 price cut. So, that means that Sony is expected to continually sell the PS3 at a significant loss of greater than $200 for at least the next two years, especially considering how complex and proprietary the PS3 components are. If Sony sells 75 million units between now and 2010 (the year we make contact) that means that Sony would have lost around EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS, which is 80% of the ENTIRE SALES of the ENTIRE videogame market. That number is calculated at a loss of $200 for the first 40 million systems and no loss for the remainder 35 million systems.

Can any company, stand to take even a one Billion dollar loss in any market and hope to stay out of bankruptcy, let alone become the market leader? Microsoft did it with the original Xbox because Microsoft has the money and the staying power. Sony had to take out a $700 million dollar loan for the PS3 launch, the first time the company has borrowed money in it's history.

Lets go line by line why the PS3 will not sell 75 million units.

#1 Cost.
Consumers don't like spending $600+ on their games systems and have never done so, ever.

#2. No games worth $600. As it stands right now if RFOM and Motorstorm were released on the 360, they would have gotten the lackluster reviews they deserve. I have stood at the PS3 kiosks watching and observing the general public and as it stands right now, every person said the same thing: "it's not worth $600, it's not worth $500." Granted as a "home media extravaganza" with Blu-Ray, Hard Drive, linux, etc. it's one of the best bargains (at launch) in the history of consumer of electronics. But to the average Joe it's just too damn expensive.

#3 The Wii. I said it a year ago, the Wii was the one to watch out for and I was right. It's funny, Wii-haters (mainly PS3 advocates) say that the "hype" will die down and the "novelty" will wear off. But the Wii has an advantage that neither the 360 or the PS3 has; $3000 developer kits. You will see a lot of very fun, very cheap, games on the Wii in the coming years, mainly from garage gamers and small productions companies. Sure, the games won't be "Next Gen" but at Wii's current price and future ability to drop the price of the Wii to $99 may very well see Nintendo #1 this time around.

#4 The 360. At least 85% of the hottest games will be on both the 360 and the PS3 and regardless if the PS3 had infinite storage via Blu-Ray developers are not going to put the time into developing "better" PS3 versions of the same multi-platform game as the ROI is simply not worth it. So in the future the 360 will ALWAYS beat the PS3 on price and for the most part beat it significantly. Fanboy convictions aside why would anyone want to pay $200 more for the same game as both systems are almost a perfect push in terms of graphics and performance?

#5 Developer Ambiguity. Sony had held the throne for 10 years and became quite much like Nintendo was in the 80's, very arrogant. This put off a lot of developers, with one big developer recently being quoted as being glad that Sony is falling on their ass. Now that the developers are seeing that the PS3 has no chance in hell establishing it's a 100 million install base like the PS2, the developers are wasting no time leaving Sony hanging. Fact is that games are way too expensive anymore to make for one system and the "exclusivity" system system invented by Nintendo in the 80's only works when you have almost total dominance of the market. Dominance is something Sony is not going to have this time around, not with a 10 million installed 360 base; heading into an almost full year of "killer-must have" games and with Halo 3 coming out.

#6 Halo 3. Sony Fanboys have always dismissed the popularity of Halo, but ignore the fact that Halo and Halo 2 pretty much pushed more Xboxes than anything else. Halo 2 was a mess and Bungie admitted as much yesterday. Bungie was forced into a severe time crunch to deliver Halo 2 and it showed, big time. Halo 3 has enjoyed a much longer development cycle and a significantly larger development staff and Bill Gates himself stating that the game will not be released till it's ready. As it stands right now, the PS3 has no "Halo. Killzone (2) has been heralding as the second coming of Christ, but has not seen the light of day since it's CGI demo almost two years ago.

#7 Cost. Why does every analyst and Sony fanboy ignore the cost of the PS3 like it has no significance whatsoever and then go even further to say "stop whining, just work some more hours!"? If the PS3 was the same price as the 360, even with the addition of essentially a "free" Blu-Ray player, then I could possibly see Sony gaining headway. However, with a logical price drop of the 360 this Christmas to $250, or lower, it is going to be neigh impossible to push a $600 game system, regardless if it's games are groundbreaking, or not.

[gnothe1]

that was one good non bias post there! you posted with logic!! that's something not a lot of sonyboys have.on #7 COST you forgot to mention development cost!from whats been said it cost more to develop a game for the Ps3 than it does for the xbox 360!! so with that being said!! WHY would a developer risk loosing that much money on a system with a very small fan base!!

the difference this time is that last gen MS had to practically beg developers or spend lots of cash for developers to support them an developers were begging Sony to put there games on sony's system because they had the fan base.if it wasn't for the fact of PLAYSTATION sony would be in the same boat as MS last gen!!

[Marriot VP]

developers say it costs twice as much on the PS3 right now

[MicroGamer]

it takes twice as many sales to reach profitibility. If it takes 500,000 copies to break into profit on PS3, then it only takes 250,000 on 360. To get 250,000 sales on a base of 10 million consoles is considerably easier than getting 500,000 on a console with a base of maximum of 2 million (giving Sony the benefit of the doubt with their numbers).