The Console Wars: Overall Sales

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to the overall know-it-all, of Wedbush and Morgan, Analyst Michael Pachter. Who is this guy you might ask? Well, he's an analyst for the firm Wedbush and Morgan. The role he's most well known for, by the gaming community, is his Nostradamus-type style in predicting the future of gaming based on the numbers this firm produces. They actually pay this guy to make guesses whether he's right or wrong. Most of the time however, he's wrong and they continue to pay him to make these guess'. (Sounds like a job I want.) I mean, look at the guy, fancy suit, pink tie, $50 haircut at the barbershop and the guy has a dental and health plan to guess!

However, it seems often times, the predictions this guy has made end up becoming the exact opposite which make either one side of the console wars happy or the other. Surely, he's been right a few times, but majority of the time, he's been flat out wrong. i.e, His claim that Gears of War 2, I believe would see the PlayStation 3 and that Microsoft had only the rights to the first Gears of War. Well, here we are at Gears of War 3 and the game still remains on the Xbox 360 exclusively and Epic has emerged and claimed they actually own the IP rights to the Gears of War franchise.

Well, his most recent claim, is the PlayStation 3 will not outsell the Xbox 360 this year. That Microsoft is desperate to hold their claim and do whatever is necessary to hold that. Well, if these numbers according to gaming site VGChartz are true, then the uprise in PS3 sales are pretty darn close to the competition, its only April of 2011 and game releases InFamous 2, Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception, The Last Guardian and Twisted Metal PS3 haven't even hit store shelves and I'm not even a fancy analyst for a marketing firm like Pachter is. Its also worth mentioning the rise in interest of the game 'Sorcery' a Harry Potter-esk type game  which at the moment has all eyes of hardcore gamers carefully watching and waiting for the games release rather than the PS3 casual gamers. If this is the case, a huge increase of sales of the PlayStation Move could in fact be imminent.

Well, this week in overall sales worldwide for gaming consoles, it seems that Pachter may be wrong in his claim again going back to what Pachter predicts, often heads in the opposite direction and fanboys on one side of the fence cheer. Well, this could be one of those times.

Lets assume the role of a Analyst for a Marketing Firm Wedbush and Morgan for a moment. Over the last month, the PlayStation 3 has steadily outsold the Xbox 360. If PlayStation sales went up, Xbox 360 remained level, if PlayStation 3 sales went down, Xbox 360 sales dropped as well. The Xbox 360 remains to sell in its homeland, however worldwide equals those sales and then exceeds them on top of the PlayStation 3 sales on foreign soil as well as its homeland. If such a thing continues with a robust exclusive line-up for the hardcore gamer both with standard PS3 and PlayStation Move games such as the titles previously listed, again Uncharted 3 is still at the door. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves carried many units and Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception WILL carry more. The PlayStation 3 also doubles as not just a Blu-ray player, but an updateable Blu-ray player with a simple software update and some pretty beefy hardware with still plenty of room to breathe. Its Netflix ready, is 3D ready, its BD-LIVE 2.0 ready and runs better on the PS3 vs a standalone unit and PlayStation Network remain's free and as a bonus, PlayStation Network will in the coming weeks receive the PC's long toted Steam Network with cloud saves, automatic updates and whatever Valve sees fit to do with hardware Sony's granted the freedom to do whatever with.

All that being said, we can put that into visual form. With the weekly worldwide sales in the "What Do the Charts Say" post, here's the graph for overall console sales. Courtesy of VGChartz.com:

It would seem to me as though the Xbox 360 and Microsoft ought to start worrying about now. PlayStation 3 last year was four million units behind Microsoft, and Nintendo remains in a distant lead, never to be gained on, but 52.9 million (360) and 49.2 (PS3) is a ever closing gap. A 2% difference and a  two or three million unit difference. The gap is closing in and we could see a change in whether by the end of this year.