14 DAY TRIAL // Yes, the title spells PS3 sales down 82 percent and it's not some piece of news from the 1st of April, nor someone's idea of a joke. A spokesperson for Chart Track confirmed this to GamesIndustry.biz today saying: "Yes, sales of PS3 hardware have dropped by 82 per cent." Is this bad enough to worry Sony? Yes, it most certainly is and it seems that the PS3's final chance of getting back in the game has evaporated.
Before the European and Australian launch of the PS3, Sony's next-gen console wasn't doing that good. Although the US and Japan are the biggest game consumers, Sony didn't feel that the console war was lost and still had hope for a good launch and sales in the PAL territories. The launching part went smoothly; especially in the UK where buyers of the pricey console got an HD Television set to go with it and a taxi ride home to ensure safety. Sales went pretty good too after launch, the PS3 having sold an amazing 165,000 units in the first two days, making it the fastest-selling system in the UK.
But after that, everything went blank. Out of the sudden, nobody's buying the PS3 and not just in the UK, but everywhere. You'd think that with such a wonderful launch, the PS3 would sell like crazy. But it doesn't as Chart Track "publishes the first week figures because there's such a clamour for them that [they] can't keep it a secret." While Microsoft's carefully analyzing the motion sensitivity technology, trying to figure out whether or not to build their own such controller for the Xbox 360, the Wii remains the only worthy opponent, as the PS3 has lost its window of opportunity, and quite frankly, it was probably the last.