14 DAY TRIAL // Phil Harrison, who was one of the leaders of Sony Worldwide Studios and now works at, has said that it will be pretty hard for the PlayStation 3 home console from Sony to sell as many units as the PlayStation 2 has done during its lifetime.
Talking to Eurogamer as part of a very interesting look back at the PlayStation 2 Harrison has stated, “I hope PS3 can match PS2, but I think the market dynamics are slightly different. It's much more competitive.”
He added a mini explanation, saying, “For a large chunk of its life-cycle, the PS2 didn't really have any competition anywhere in the world so Sony was able to sell a huge number of units. If PS3 does reach the same level it will take longer and it will be a more difficult challenge.”
At the moment Sony estimates that the PS2 has managed to move more than 146 million units to gamers all over the world and the console is still selling, while the PlayStation 3 stands on 46.6 million devices sold during its lifetime.
During the last few months the PlayStation 3 has performed worse than the Xbox 360 in the NPD Group numbers which are linked to the North American market while reportedly doing better on the European markets.
Both the home console developers are behind the Nintendo Wii, which managed to attract quite a lot of new customers to gaming with its easy to use motion tracking controllers.
Kinect and Move have brought motion tracking to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 but it will take time to see whether the two systems will make the same kind of impact and whether gamers who already own a Wii are ready to pay a few hundred dollars in order to switch platforms and get a new gaming experience.