14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has high hopes for Killzone 2, the shooter developed by Guerrilla Games, which was hailed as being a Halo killer showing the true capabilities of the PlayStation 3 when it came to first person action. And when the game debuted in the final days of February, it registered good sales, reaching the fifth place in the NPD Group software charts with about 323,000 units sold. Unfortunately, things only went downhill from there.
In March, the videogame only managed to reach the seventh position in the chart, selling 296,000 units even if it was available for the 31 days of the month. In April, it moved 58,000 units, bringing its lifetime sales in the United States up to 677,000. Sony is saying that the game has broken through the 1 million barrier world wide and that it is the fastest Sony published title to go to 500,000 units sold in the United States.
That statement is a powerful example of the ever worsening position that Sony has in the videogaming world. In April, the PlayStation 3, its flagship console, sold 127,000 units, which is less than the Nintendo Wii that moved 340,000, and the Xbox 360, which shipped 175,000. Even the PlayStation 2, the older console that has seen a price drop, has beaten its younger brother.
Year over year sales of the PS3 also went down. This being the case, it's hard to see a Sony made PS3 game break sales records when the install base of the home console is so small. Killzone 2 might only be a symptom of a wider problem that the Japanese company needs to address quickly.
One of the solutions, proposed by both industry analysts and game publishers, is to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 by 100 dollars in order to make it more competitive. It was rumored that Sony might announce the drop in price at the E3 trade show, but considering the 1 billion loss that the company recently posted, this might not happen.