Burning Question: Has The PS3 Already Lost In The Next-Gen Console Wars?

The answer might be more surprising than you think.

If you read the gaming blogs during the PS3 launch, Sony was dead on arrival. It certainly wasn’t the smoothest of launches, with console shortages, already lofty pricetags inflated due to eBay auctions, no online strategy to rival Xbox Live, and a dearth of compelling games for the nascent machine.

But did the PS3 really limp out of the gate that badly? Putting its initial sales up against its direct competitor, the Xbox 360, the numbers tell a different tale. According to NPD Group data, the PS3 sold approximately 902,000 consoles during its first three months in the US. The Xbox 360 sold 50,000 fewer consoles during its first three month in the US, coming in at roughly 854,000. Comparing the PS3 with its highly successful predecessors, it outsold both the PSone and PS2 during the same time frame. So why the doom and gloom surrounding Sony?

It seems the PS3 outsold the X360 and even its predecessors, the PSone and PS2 during the same time frame.

“The media are plain stupid,” says Michael Pachter, analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. “People are being overly critical on how well it’s doing mostly because their expectation for what the sales should have been were too high.”

Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with IDC, agrees that Sony received an overabundance of criticism. One of the other problems facing Sony was the overwhelming success of it current heavyweight, the PS2. “The fact of the matter us that the PS2 is still entrenched,” says Pidgeon. “That is Sony’s biggest problem for the PS3. What is the incentive to buy PS3 when you can still get great titles like God of War II for PS2?”

“I expect the Wii and Xbox 360 to stay in the lead in North America for the next two years,” says Pidgeon. Where that flips is in 2010, 2011, where the Ps3 has a huge install base and surpasses [Nintendo and Microsoft] while they are prepping their next boxes.”

“I think [the PS3] ends up in first,” says Patcher. “But all three consoles will all have 30 percent or greater market share, and all of them will win.”

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