PS3 sales plummet in second week

[The News Bot]

There was always going to be a large number of gamers eager to pick-up the much-delayed European PlayStation 3, which goes a long way to explaining the quantity of consoles Sony shifted in its opening weekend. But the tangible sense of anticlimax so evident amongst consumers and retail has been given substance by newly released [...]
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[mikeaitch]

Anybody surprised?

I wanted one before, but not now. £425 ? dodgy backwards compatibility?

I wonder how many of the quite large number sold are actually being used for BR. It was supposed to be the killer app that killed HD DVD...

[Max Payne]

I was looking to buy one for the BD playback, but the price is just crazy for a games machine. €630 here in Ireland. Too much considering the problems etc.

[steve36]

I was going to buy one mainly for BR but the region coding farce has appeared again so they can keep it.
At £350 in the near future it might be more tempting....

[sbowler]

£200 in line with other machines, may increase its popularity.

[Jonstone]

This is a total none story.

What was supposed to happen, were they supposed to sell 165,000 consoles in the second week too?

You can't say sales figures are poor by comparing them to the previous weeks record breaking sales that were made up of 2 months worth of pre-orders.

The only relevant question is whether 30,000 units sold in a week for a games console at the end of march is a reasonable amount or not and to me it sounds pretty good.

[greektony]

not for one that has only been out a week it doesnt!!

[Jonstone]

Originally Posted by greektony

not for one that has only been out a week it doesnt!!

But as has been asked in the PS3 forum when this very story was discussed, who buys in week 2?

Week one customers are generally those who have been waiting for the console for months and have pre-ordered.

Week two buyers are those that were either waiting to see what the console was like before ordering or people who have bought one after seeing it without any prior interest in it.

There is no way to draw any comparison between this launch and previous console launches because no other console launched with the quantities of the PS3 so there was no stock at all in week 2

These stories all seem to come back to one thing, for once a manufacturer actually waited to launch their product until they had the numbers to satisfy demand but rather than praise them for this, almost every area of the media, this forum included, seem determined to make out that it is not selling well because it hasn't sold out.

[DougalDC]

Originally Posted by mikeaitch

Anybody surprised?

I wanted one before, but not now. £425 ? dodgy backwards compatibility?

dodgy backwards compatibility? afaik, the percentage of pal ps1 & ps2 games compatible is above 80%, and from a back cataloge of about 3000 pal ps2 games, i'd say thats pretty good!

Originally Posted by steve36

I was going to buy one mainly for BR but the region coding farce has appeared again so they can keep it.

the region encoding sux bigtime, but its the movie companies that are enforcing that, so that they can suck as much money out of each region that they will tolerate. its not all doom & gloom though, so far i have seen quite a few region-free films out, even casino royal looked to be multi region, at least the copy in blockbuster was.

i cant see the launch as a bad thing, bigest console launch in history seems quite good to me, no wonder there is no-one left in week 2, the die-hards have theirs now, and the price will make the non-die-hards sit and watch a while before they make the plunge.

i have every faith in the ps3, it will take a while to reach the penitration level of the 360, but imo, it has soo much more potential, and it ooozes class and presentation. i would be carefull of the 1st generation of games though, as the devs are still learning what to do.

[Knyght_byte]

you can tell some shops are a little nervous though about the 'apparent' lack of interest.....

my local HMV had a sandwich board out front saying 'PS3 in stock get one while we have them' or words to similar effect.......

translation, we have a shedload and are not going to meet our expected target that head office set and we dont want them sniffing around considering staff cuts/bonus reductions/etc to get that missing profit back...

i think if you will use all its features the PS3 is a fantastic vfm item.....if you only want a console though its waaaaaay overpriced....and lets face it, whilst a number of people will buy it for its many other features, most people will be buying it to play games on.....the HD market isnt big enough yet for that to be a massive factor.....the DVD market was already reasonably well entrenched by the time PS2 got onboard and helped bring it to even more people......HD however is still a niche product to most people....

just wish they could magically turn some PS3's in to Wii's so i could play Zelda finally

[rooster-x]

Originally Posted by Knyght_byte

just wish they could magically turn some PS3's in to Wii's so i could play Zelda finally

You could do what I did and play it on the Gamecube!

[Mr.D]

They had staff in HMV Oxford Street wandering about approaching people ( mainly single 20-30s blokes) to try and tempt them to buy a PS3...on the release day....

make of that what you will

[Resonance]

Carphone Warehouse is giving away a free PS3 when you buy certain mobile phones. OK, so you do have to sign up for a rather high monthly tariff.

[barghest]

I'll only buy one when the price comes down. Stupidly overpriced.

[Layne RIP]

I think the price has been the biggest problem for this... ok it's got a blu-ray player... but most people who buy a games console, buy it for playing games, the Blu-Ray is a bonus... not (for me anyway) the main selling point, especially as i have a feeling that due to the higher price of equipment (compared to HD-DVD) Blu-Ray will lose the HD war.

If the PS3 continues to get low sales figures then hopefully Sony will get the message, and lower the price a bit.