Of course there are, relatively speaking, plenty of PS3’s and Wii’s out there. Both companies are shipping in as many as they can, with reports of 125,000 to 175,000 PS3’s already out there (and with 10% of those reportedly on eBay), and Nintendo bringing in, at launch, four times as many Wii’s as Sony had PS3s.
But if you want to walk into a store and be guaranteed of buying a next generation games console, the Xbox 360 is the one you’ll find every time, because they got their production issues sorted out months ago, with Microsoft aiming to literally sell millions of Xbox 360s over the Christmas period.
But this is hardly the final outcome. Next year will see millions more PS3’s and Wii’s available worldwide, with the best time to really look at the figures to see how consoles have been selling being the middle of 2007 and after the Christmas shopping season of 2007 is over.
Nevertheless, people want statistics and figures now, and they seem to be forthcoming.
According to Softpedia, since the Xbox 360 came onto the market, Sony has lost 5% of the games console market. But this figure is meaningless, as it doesn’t really take into account that most people who have been waiting for a PS3 haven’t been able to buy one. Other reports indicate that the PS2 still outsells the Xbox 360 as well.
Softpedia also has some other figures that are interesting, but they are more instructive on the past than the future.
About the only thing we can be sure of is that the Xbox 360 will outsell the PS3 and the Wii this holiday season not only by sheer weight of numbers alone, but also thanks to its recent dramatic November upgrades figuring in strongly along with the stunning achievement of already selling over 1 million copies of the latest hit Xbox 360 game, Gears of War.
