Too early to say who wins console wars

The Guardian has an article about the "lower than expected" sales of the PS3 in the USA. In November / December the PS3 sold only 750,000 units, compared with 1.8 million Wii and 2 million XBox 360. Typical example of how you can take correct data and end up with wrong conclusions. Microsoft did not win the console wars yet, with Sony coming last.

The correct answer to the question of how many Wii and PS3 units sold is "all of them". The numbers cited above are comparing the sales of the XBox 360 with the production numbers of the Wii and the PS3. It is impossible to say how many more Wii and PS3 units would have been sold if they had been available. And it is hard to say how many XBox 360 were sold for the simple reason that no other "next gen" console was available at that particular store. We'll have to wait for the christmas 2007 sales to get a first realistic glimpse on which console is coming out ahead. And then it will still take many years before a count of the lifetime sales of each console reveals a final judgement on this issue.

I would have bought a PS3, but over here in Europe they aren't even sold before March. Wiis were sold, but a friend of mine who got one for his kids had to ask in half a dozen shops before getting one. The only next gen console I saw available in the shops I visited was the XBox 360. Being actually for sale gives this console a big advantage in the number game up to now. It will be some time before you'll see all three of them standing on a shop's shelf. And even in 2007 the XBox will still have the advantage of having already over 100 games available for it, while the others are still catching up.

I'm not in a hurry to buy that PS3, although I still think that I eventually will. Besides having to wait for good games, I have two other issues with the PS3: High Definition, and the Blueray drive. I don't have a HDTV yet, and High Definition TV is slow in arriving. I'm sure that the next TV I buy will be High Definition. But right now I would only need it to see PS3 games in the best resolution, and that is a bit hard to justify. Makes you wonder if the famous guy who ruined his TV with a Wiimote was just looking for an excuse to buy a new HDTV. The Blueray drive is simply a gamble, nobody knows if Blueray will be the next VHS or the next Betamax. With Blueray players still more expensive as a PS3, this could either be a bargain, or an investment in the wrong technology.

While I'm not planning to buy one, I still think that the Wii will end up outselling both the XBox 360 and the PS3, because it is much cheaper than either, and more accessible to the non-hardcore gamer general public. Everybody "gets" Wii Sports after 3 seconds of explanation. You can't say that about the typical console games on the competitor's machines.