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This Ain't A Console War, It's a Genocide (Sales Figures! Ooooh!)

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Ozymandias:
Japan.

April 2007.

DS - 847,000
Wii - 358,000
PSP - 123,000
PS2 - 52,000
PS3 - 49,000
360 - 12,000
GBA - 4,400
GCN - 1,000

Wii sold three times the PS2, PS3, and 360 combined. The gap between sales is just constantly widening, the PS3 down 50K from last month, the Wii up 60K.

I really want to see NPD numbers. Japan is terrifyingly dominated by Nintendo these days, but it's never surprising. US is where it counts.

0bsessions:
According to the last figures I saw (Which are a couple months old), the Wii will probably surpass the 360 by the time it's six full months old. A couple months ago, the consoles were at 10 mill (360), 6 mill(Wii) and 3 mill (PS3). The 360'll continue to sell, but I think the PS3 is going to continue to drop off and eventually pretty much completely bottom out by the end of 2008. It's simply too costly to produce for them to make it fiscally reasonable to put it out at an even vaguely competitive price point before it's too late for them to make its release anything but an utter fiasco.

Storm Rider:
Actually Japan was firmly Sony territory last gen (just like everywhere else), so Nintendo surpassing them is pretty significant.

For some reason Europe has always had a pretty huge hard-on for Sony products, but yes, the US is the most significant console market by far. The question at this point is: Can Sony recover from their horrendous missteps at launch and cut back on the 360's head start? And will the current Wii craze die off, or will hardcore gamers split between the 360 and PS3 and all use the Wii as their secondary system, putting Nintendo in the lead? Or will the Wii really finally do what people have been trying for years and appeal to both casual and traditional gamers? Nobody really knows. I'll most likely eventually ending up all 3 consoles this generation, so it really doesn't matter. Console wars are for marketing executives and 15-year-old forum kids. There's plenty of room for all of the companies to do business and make money and the sort of bizarre, cult-like loyalty video game consoles seem to foster is frankly baffling.

Scytale:
How many people game on a PC compared to a console? Is it even relevant or is it a different demographic? It would be interesting to see the comparison. I'm a pretty casual gamer these days, as I have uni and a full time job, which takes up a lot of my time. Back in the 90's when I was a high school student, I was pretty fanatical about games. I've always preferred using a PC to the consoles,

The perception amongst my friends and I were that consoles were kind of for the "weeny" gamers, people who couldn't afford a pc, the games on a console were never as good and the hardware was always outdated. Nowadays something curious has happened. It seems to have changed, the hardware in consoles are getting really good (especially the PS 3) and there seems to be a lot more games for them now then there was back in the mega drive/ snes days.

I'm seriously considering buying a PS 3, the hardware in it seems amazing, the cell processor has definitely got me intrigued and not having to worry about patches, drivers, disk space etc seems like a really nice convenience. Also the ability to be able to tinker with it by Installing Linux on it really appeals to the geek in me.

I guess what I'm asking is for someone who is at the moment a very casual gamer (I'll buy maybe 6 new games a year) is it worth buying a console? Or should I spend the money on upgrading my PC? Or even is the ps3 really the best console if I were to buy one. If someone wants to give me a brief run down on the state of gaming at the moment I'd appreciate it.

0bsessions:
Actually, that's not a recent trend. Consoles, at launch period (The first year or two of its lifetime) have always outperformed PC games. Compare early era games on a given console to games that were coming out for PC at the same time, usually the console game surpasses the PC game.

Plus, in order to get the bleeding edge graphics that surpass any given gen of consoles, one has to drop an absolute mint. It's not so much a matter of not being able to afford as proper money management. In order to keep up with anything even encroaching upon the graphical limitations of the 360 and PS3, one would have to drop close to a grand on upgrades (High end processor, plenty of RAM, high end graphics card, good cooling system, nice monitor, in some cases a new motherboard to run SLI and a newer processor). Why do that when you can get an Xbox 360 for $400?

PC gaming is the absolute, far and away worst place for the casual gamer. It's a landscape pretty much dominated by MMOs and FPS and they really don't wander far out of that pair of genres. The selection of even viable PC games is few and far between, much less a variety of them. Pretty much everything available for PC ends up on consoles these days as the console market is exponentially larger.

Judging by your perception, you sound like a slowly recovering "PC elitist." That breed's swiftly dying out in this day and age. Preferring is one thing, but considering console gamers the "weeny" variety is a bit snobbish. The games on console versus PC is debateable in terms of actually gameplay and fun (Which to most console gamers are the real factors that matter). I could name more games for any single console (Even short-lived ones like the Dreamcast) that I enjoyed than games exclusively for the PC I enjoyed.

If you want top hardware and graphics "possibilities", the Playstation 3 is the way to go. If you want to actually get any mileage out of it, though, I'd vehemntly recommend against it. The reason I quote the word possibilities is that I honestly don't think the PS3 will ever reach its potential or even surpass the 360 in terms of actualized graphics.

The system with the best hardware hasn't been the best received since the Super Nintendo. N64 and Xbox were the most powerful consoles in the last two generations and neither performed well in terms of sales. The problem arises that the more powerful and complicated the console is, the harder to design for it is. The Wii, the weakest hardware wise, is said to be the easiest by far to program for, and thus more attractive to programmers. The PS3 is so complex in its architecture that most developers are wary to work with it (Dev kits weren't even finalized and released until scant months before release) and even fewer are willing to try to explore its full potential due to the enormous cost.

Power is one thing, but it's software selection that makes or breaks a console and PS3 simply doesn't have it. We live in a wasteful society and a $600 price tag isn't going to drive consumers away from a good product. The reason the PS3 is sitting on shelves isn't the price, it's the piss-poor support it's getting. Nintendo is a company that can survive on its own properties (Your Marios, Zeldas, Metroids, etc), Sony is not. Sony has a scant handful of marketable first party games and they tend to jump around on them too much (They seem to have all but given up on Jak and Daxter, for example). Meanwhile, Microsoft is gobbling up all of Sony's third party support. They're not pulling exclusive games over to the 360 exclusively themselves, but getting the games on their console as well is enough. If you've got a choice between spending $400 and $600 to play GTA 4, which are you gonna do? ESPECIALLY when the graphical difference is negligible? Sony has, officially, lost exclusive rights to just about every major third party game in development (Devil May Cry, GTA, Resident Evil, etc) and even mainstays like Square Enix are jumping ship (While not announced for 360, FF XIII is not a Sony exclusive and will probably end up there). Considering MGS II came out for Xbox, I doubt the new installment will stay exclusive to Sony much longer with all these developers going with the more likely sale on the 360. Also, Sony's arrogance has been getting the best of them, too. One good example would be with the Unreal 3 engine. Sony had an exclusive agreement to have the next Unreal Tournament on PS3 instead of 360. Along came Gears of War for 360 and Sony shit-talked said game to try and make the competition look bad. This ended up pissing off the Unreal dev team and they yanked the exclusivity.

That's not even touching on the Wii, the console with the current fastest rate of sale. At the clip it's going, it might be the fastest console ever to ten million by the time the demand starts to die down a little (They're still allegedly difficult to find, even with six million units shipped).

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