porath blag

i know this guy who will take every opportunity to gloat about how ps3 is failing. he cites a multitude of “game blog” writers who have nothing better to do than post sensational articles with absolutely no substance. many of these try to show why ps3 is doing poorly. however the fact is that it is not doing poorly at all. below is a sales chart with the release dates for all 3 current gen systems lined up at the origin.

hardware sales since release (source: vgchartz.com)

clearly, ps3 was basically neck and neck with xbox 360 for since-release sales until about halfway through ps3’s life when it actually gained a lot of ground on 360. if this trend continues, 360 will eventually be overtaken. that’s not even considering the facts that ps3 has always costed more than 360, and 360 had a failure rate of nearly 30% at release, causing many people to go buy another system, artificially inflating sales figures.

another way to look at this is to imagine of ps3 had been out as long as xbox 360 has. we can basically estimate mathematically how this would look. to do that, you just need the number of days since each console’s release date, and the number of units sold.

xbox 360 came out in the us and canada on november 22nd, 2005, 1209 days ago. ps3 came out in japan on november 11th, 2006, 855 days ago. since the most recent known hardware sales figures are from march 7th, we’ll subtract 8 days giving us 1201 and 847 respectively. since then, xbox 360 has sold 29.1 million units, and ps3 has sold 20.98 million units. (source vgchartz.com)

29,100,000 units / 1201 days = 24,230 xbox 360 units per day
20,980,000 units /  847 days = 24,770 ps3      units per day

from there, we can extrapolate based on the average units sold per day to arrive at a theoretical number of ps3s sold if it had been out as long as xbox 360:

24,770 units * 1201 days = 29,748,770 units

29,748,770 ps3s - 29,100,000 360s = 648,770 more ps3s than 360s

so basically, in spite of more expensive hardware, hardware that actually works, and having “too few good exclusives”, the ps3 hardware is still selling just as well or better than 360. don’t let the naysayers misguide you.
p.s. i don’t want to hear about how it’s because ps3 has a bluray drive. sony gambled on bluray and won. that’s business.

Filed under:
gaming by porath