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Sony Targets 150 Million PS3 Sales

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

July 21, 2008

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Hirai told the Financial Times that Sony is targeting 150 million PS3 sales during the first nine years of the console’s lifecycle.

Released in 1994, the original PlayStation has sold 102m units, while the PlayStation 2, now in its ninth year on the market, has sold in excess of 140m units.

"It's not fun for me replicating the PS2 numbers. I've seen that movie already," Hirai said.

"I want to try to see if we can exceed the PS2 numbers after nine years, otherwise why are we in this business?"

At the end of its fiscal year in March sales of Sony’s PS3 totaled 12.85m units. The company said last week that it is “well on its way” to hitting its ten million sales target for the current financial year.

Ozzman_79's picture
On July 22nd Ozzman_79 said:

Sony is targeting 150 million PS3 sales during the first nine years of the console’s lifecycle......and i'm "targeting" being a millionaire and retiring at 30, what's your point? Anyone can make outlandish targets.

papalazaru's picture
On July 22nd papalazaru said:

150 million units .. i just don't see any home system getting close to that this generation. The only system that might go near 150 million units could be the Nintendo DS.

grognard66's picture
On July 22nd grognard66 said:

coop - I see where your coming from. Graphics certainly aren't everything, but there are many other advances that will be possible by increased computing power and RAM. Improved A/I and physics are two areas that can enjoy revolutionary changes if developers were not so constrained by today's technology. Imagine sandbox type games where all of the NPC's have developed A/I's to interact amongst each other and react realistically to your actions (rather than just a few scripted routines). Both 360 and PS3 are severely constrained by RAM and this would open up larger levels and fewer/shorter load times. These are just a few things that we'll see evolve in the next few years and once games that take advantage of new technologies start appearing on PC, console gamers will want to experience the same things too.

coop's picture
On July 21st coop said:

Grog, I don't care about life cycle semantics, I'm actually very curious as to what sort of market factors will force new hardware to be released. What fundamental changes in my living room are going to take place that would make the current PS360s obsolete? When the PS2 was designed there was no such thing as high def, most people hadn't even heard of the internet, and hard drives were very expensive. The high def format is set for the foreseeable future, the inputs are component and HDMI, and the resolutions won't be changing for a long time. The wireless/internet functionality is also stable and will not change enough to warrant new hardware. Both consoles are capable of having large amounts of local storage and have plenty of processing power for the near future. Both are capable of software upgrades that can improve functionality.

I guess what I'm asking, outside of processor speed (which can be overrated), what fundamental change in consumer electronics is going to force MS/Sony to release a new console. One will come someday, but I think (especially for Sony) they are at least 5-8 years away, not 3.

grognard66's picture
On July 21st grognard66 said:

@coop - while the current gen consoles look great to us today, one need only look at what console games looked like 10 years ago to understand why consoles NEVER have effective 10 year cycles. New PC games utilizing DX10 already offer a tangible graphic improvement over consoles and upcoming capabilities will only further exacerbate the divide, making this current gen unpalatable in a few years to serious gamers.

Sony execs keep repeating the "10 year" mantra for shareholders - not gamers. Most shareholders wouldn't know a console if you hit them upside the head with one, so they are gullible enough to believe this. Sony needs to justify their flagship product as a good ROI and the numbers simply don't add up within a 5-6 cycle. Because of the launch delay, higher than anticipated development costs, slower than anticipated cost reductions and reduced software sales/attach rate (where the profits really are) Sony needs to give investors a reason to stick with them. It's highly disingenuous, but that's hardly unique behavior for Sony.

Nugent's picture
On July 21st Nugent said:

The "life cycle" of a console isn't measured from when its released to when its successor is released. Its from when they start selling it to when they stop selling it, e.g., until it stops making money for them. The PS2 is 8 years old and still selling well. The PSOne sold for 11 years. That doesn't mean that Sony expects the PS3 to be its flagship console for 10 full years, it just means they expect to continue selling it for that long. So stating that they want a 10 year life cycle is perfectly reasonable.

150M in ten years isn't really such a crazy number if you look at lifetime sales of the PS2 and compare it to the PS3. The PS3 sales are very comparable to PS2 sales.

coop's picture
On July 21st coop said:

grognard66, "MS will launch their next console no later than 2011."

I think that's the really big question. When does MS feel the need to introduce a new console, and what will spur this. I think both machines are powerful enough to have 10 year life cycles, as Sony claims. What will force a refresh? Will the DVD limitation force MS to add a new console? If the PS3 really is uber-super-computer-powerful (up for debate), and it has bigger storage media, what would the reason be to force new hardware out in just a few years, just to keep up with the Jones's?

I don't have answers (obviously), but I think the next-gen release cycle will be even more out of sync. I could see Nintendo releasing before anyone (mainly because it is seriously lacking storage), MS next (simply because as a company MS loves to release new versions), and who knows when Sony feels the need for PS4, maybe 2014?

grognard66's picture
On July 21st grognard66 said:

MS will launch their next console no later than 2011 forcing Sony to respond in kind. There's no way Sony will be willing or able to cost reduce PS3 enough before then to get anywhere near those numbers. To be fair, MS won't either. Both systems will be lucky to sell 50 million units, since they are both more focused on profiitability and are willing to sacrifice market share for profits.

Nugent's picture
On July 21st Nugent said:

Thinking that Sony is going to be third in 8 years, simply because they're third now, is extremely short sighted. Especially since Sony is only ~5 M units behind MS, and 5 M units is a tiny fraction of 150 M units. A 5 M lead is nothing when you're talking about a ten year span.

rydamgw's picture
On July 21st rydamgw said:

Yeah yur definately a dumbass ps3 is only 5 million units behind xbox 360 according to microsoft thats not that far given microsofts year head start and ps3 is in a better position than ps2 was at this time in its life cycle so how exactly do u figure yur logic not to mention ps3 vastly outsells xbox worldwide exspecially in europe and japan. You also forgot to mention how microsoft lies about there sales figures by adding in refurbished units they even addmitted this saying that many refurbs have been counted which w a 33% failure rate is alot of units so tell me how is yur position even supported?

Kim_Naroz's picture
On July 21st Kim_Naroz said:

Wow!

This makes you wonder how many Xbox 360 and Wii systems will be sold this generation--perhaps over 200,000,000 for each of them.

Microsoft was so overwhelmingly confident that the Playstation 3 would remain in last place in terms of worldwide sales that Microsoft literally "publicly" announced on stage that the Xbox 360 would sell more systems worldwide than the Playstation 3 does this generation.

This forces us to make a decision on who to believe: Sony or Microsoft.

Advantage: Microsoft

Reason why: Simple, because Playstation 3 is in a very distant third place behind the Wii and Xbox 360. That isn't going to change anytime within the next several years, because the lead that the Xbox 360 and Wii have over the Playstation 3 is far too large.

Bottom Line: Sony can "aim" for 150,000,000 systems sold all they want, but the Playstation 3 won't come close to hitting that target. Time after time, the Playstation 3 has failed to reach Sony's "sales goals." For example, Sony had said their sales goal was to sell 6,000,000 Playstation 3 systems by the spring of 2006. Sony had only been able to produce 5,500,000 systems by the spring of 2006 (which classifies as "sold" according to Sony's definition). However, of the 5,500,000 systems that were produced, there were only 1,400,000 "owners" of the Playstation 3 system.