14 DAY TRIAL // Despite their price cut in August 2009 and the push to make the PlayStation 3 a machine that does more than gaming, Sony is still behind the Xbox 360 in terms of sales in North America, as shown by the NPD Group numbers released late last week. The Xbox 360 moved more than 190,000 while the PlayStation 3 is just under 160,000, a gap that is smaller than one year ago but still worrying for the Sony made platform. Still, the company chose to emphasize the way the PS3 evolved in the last few months.
Patrick Seybold, who is the senior director of corporate communications and social media at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, stated, “In May, we experienced our tenth consecutive month of year over year growth, and it is clear that the demand for PlayStation 3 and its incredible content is not subsiding as evidenced by an increase of 18% in PS3 hardware sales and revenue increase of 58% in PS3 software sales since last May.”
The Sony executive claims that there are some supply issues which have affected sales of the PS3 but that the problem is easing and Sony is pushing hard to make sure that anyone can get a home console and the Move motion tracking device when September rolls around.
It's hard to see how the PlayStation 3 will be able to increase its sales numbers significantly in the coming few months, before the fall launch season gets into full swing. There are no huge exclusive video games that can sway gamers to pick up one console or the other.
The big potential game changers are the September launch of the PlayStation Move, the motion tracking solution, which is coming in September and will get support from a slew of more casual titles but also from the likes of SOCOM 4. Sony is banking hard on the move to three-dimensional gaming, which should take place towards the end of 2010.