This week on the CAGcast, CheapyD gave a quote from Microsoft’s Product Manager, Aaron Greenberg, that basically bashed Sony for not coming through on what they have promised. They did promise many ideas to be realized, that so far… haven’t. Wombat, in almost a fanboyish way, jumped in to say that he was wrong. And mainly in the area of Blu-ray. For those of you who are still behind the Blu-ray band wagon, this is for you.
I have no qualms with Sony, they’re a great company that provides quality products. I also don’t have anything against Wombat. I usually agree with him on almost every topic. However, Sony has failed in two main areas: PS3 and Blu-ray. As I’ve stated before, blu-ray and HD-DVD were doomed from the beginning. Blu-ray has won the battle, but will lose the war. And Wombat, you’re just wrong this time.
The main argument that Wombat was throwing was that the sales of the PS3 have jumped significantly since the end of the format war. Anyone who follows NPD numbers*, knows this isn’t true. He wanted to know the the difference in sales from January to April. Here you go, Wombat.
January:
Wii: 274,000 (Total: 7.7 million)
PS3: 269,000 (Total: 3.5 million)
360: 230,000 (Total: 9.5 million)
February: (end of format wars)
Wii: 432,000 (Total: 8.1 million)
PS3: 280,800 (Total: 3.8 million)
360: 254,600 (Total: 9.6 million)
March:
Wii: 721,000 (Total: 8.8 million)
360: 262,000 (Total: 9.9 million)
PS3: 257,000 (Total: 4 million)
April:
Wii: 714,200 (Total: 9.5 million)
360: 188,000 (Total: 10.1 million)
PS3: 187,100 (Total: 4.2 million)
NPD numbers taken from DVDGuy’s Blog
Amazing! The PS3 sold 82,000 less in April than their January sales. Considering the numbers, its obvious that the format wars either had no effect on the PS3, or in fact, hindered it slightly. I doubt the latter though. And in the months after the end of the war, the 360 outsells Sony’s system! The truly amazing part of these numbers, is that the Wii continues to dominate the competition, in fact outselling both, combined, in March and April. That is such a large lead that the Wii went from being behind the Xbox 360 by 1.8 million units (w/ a 1 year lead), to just over half a million behind in four months. So while Microsoft and Sony continue to spin their numbers in any way possible, Nintendo laughs. Literally.
Back to Wombat, though. His arguments were plainly taken out of context, and really seemed to be a bunch of nitpicking. He didn’t really address the point which is what really mattered… Why hasn’t Sony delivered. I have the answer, because they’re trying to catch up with the other consoles so much, that it seems that they’ve lost what their real goal was. They addressed the problem later in the podcast, and in the end, the title was apt: “Wombat’s Bad Fact Day”. So Wombat, since I really do like you 95% of the time, please make sure you’re factually caught up before you say something that causes you much more hate mail than your average day.
Also, I want to make it clear that I have issues with the other systems too. Xbox – make your systems stop dying, your system is the only one that dies on a regular basis, which means, its not that hard to fix. Nintendo – I have new hopes now that WiiWare has hit, but for god sakes, give me a USB hard drive!!! In the least, open up my SD card so I can not only store save files on there, but access content directly from there, and I mean games. Seriously, I have the most plain and obvious reason you should do this, but thats another story…
*NPD numbers are not a representation of all sales, but are considered to be the most accurate depiction of sales because they track sales for many high profile companies.
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