Sony sets PS3 sales objective
150m units worldwide
Sony plans to have sold 150m PlayStation 3 units worldwide by the end of the console’s lifecycle, it has been revealed.
Kaz Hirai, head of Sony Computer Entertainment, said that the firm eventually hopes to see sales of the PS3 outstrip the 140m PS2s it has sold in the nine years that console has been on sale.
The Sony executive admitted to the Financial Times that “it's not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers”. However, he stressed that if Sony can’t exceed the PS2 sales figures then “why are we in this business?”
It has a long way to go Sony’s original PlayStation sold around 102m units during its lifetime. Between the PS3's Japanese debut in November 2006 and the end of March 2008 - some 16 months - Sony had only managed to shift around 12.8m PS3s worldwide.
That means it has to sell 137.2m PS3s in the next seven-and-three-quarter years to meet the 150m target. It has set itself a short-term goal of selling a further 10m consoles by the end of its current fiscal year on 31 March 2009.
Sony has already cut the console’s price several times, in a bid to boost sales. The firm announced at the recent E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles that from September it will sell an 80GB model in the US for $399 (£199/€250) - a price cut of around $150 (£75/€94).
COMMENTS
Hahahahaha
"The Wii is rapidly losing face, as more and more people discover it's nothing short of a fad." says the AC.
Meanwhile, in this week's All Formats chart, MGS4 sits at number 10, the highest-placed of the 10 titles in the whole top 40 that is for a non-Nintendo format. On hardware, Nintendo continue to devastate the opposition as well. The 'fad' isn't showing signs of dropping off just yet.
Certainly dooable.
Out of all the consoles, I would expect the PS3 to be the long-term favorite. The Wii is rapidly losing face, as more and more people discover it's nothing short of a fad. The 360 is stuck with last-gen features, and a very niche gaming lineup of mostly FPS genre games.
The PS3 has the features, it has the relaibility, it now has the games, and the games it has are of high quality, and very wide ranging from things like the PSN puzzlers like ELefunk, to Singstar, to Arcade shooters like SuperStardust, to the traditional gamer titles like Uncharted and MGS4. Given that it's also the best price Blu-ray player, and also has the best media capabilities, the £50 price difference is neither here nor there...
