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Tretton: PlayStation Brand “Truly Hitting its Stride”
Nintendo may have stolen the headlines following the NPD Group’s monthly sales data release on Thursday thanks to the Wii overtaking the Xbox 360 as the bestselling home console in North America this generation, but Sony also had its own victories during June as all three of the company’s gaming platforms saw strong month over month sales growth.
Driven by the release of June’s bestselling title, Metal Gear Solid 4, month over month PS3 sales leapt 94 percent. The firm shifted 405.5K PS3s, compared to 219.8K Xbox 360s.
The launch of a God of War PSP bundle helped drive an 85 percent increase in sales of Sony's handheld, while PS2 sales were up 42 percent on May’s numbers.
According to SCEA president Jack Tretton, the PlayStation brand is coming into its own and building up crucial momentum for the second half of 2008.
"The PlayStation brand is truly hitting its stride on its long-term opportunity across all three platforms,” he said.
“Our strong June numbers serve as proof to the continued momentum of the PS3 and affirm that we’re exactly where we expected to be.
“This month’s success can be attributed to the exclusive blockbuster Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and we’re poised for continued growth into the back half of the year with a much anticipated line-up, including LittleBigPlanet, SOCOM: Confrontation, Resistance 2, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, and NBA ’09: The Inside
“Additionally, the new PlayStation Network video delivery service will be a big driver for the PS3 and PSP, allowing consumers to extend their multi-media and entertainment experience.”
I COMPLETELY AGREE IF U HAVE A PS3 ADD ME MGW8984 and check out my comment on e3 big three
360 will never catch Wii, no matter how low they drop the price. Wii is it's own little universe, with a marketing gimmick that appeals to casuals across all demographics, and people will never switch over to the 360 Arcade because of Nintendo's strong brand awareness. And hardcore gamers with any brains will shun that POS Arcade version like the plague. Sadly the 360 brand is fairly outdated technology already, and pushing out a version with a larger hard drive doesn't do much more than muddy their already murky waters. The Xbots hate on the high def drive, the built-in wireless, HDMI, and all the things that make the PS3 a cutting edge machine, while they shell out extra $$$ to get the same stuff on their crapbox all while reassuring themselves that PS3 is "too high priced". But it's a country of sheep, and Walmart and low prices trump quality every day. We get what we deserve; for evidence just look in the oval office of the white house. Similarly, if you're on your third or fourth 360, you need to reevaluate your life.
Next-Gen has already commented that Metal Gear Solid 4 is definitely not a consistent mover of hardware units. As expected, Metal Gear Solid 4 had a big boost of PS3 sales in North America and Japan, but surprisingly, only for less than one month. Now, the Playstation 3 sales are back to their usual level.
The reason why Grand Theft Auto 4 and Devil May Cry 4 didn't help sell systems is because of the fact that they are both multi-platform games. It will be that way with Final Fantasy 13, too. Previously, Final Fantasy 13 would have sold a lot of Playstation 3 systems like Metal Gear Solid 4 did. Now that Final Fantasy 13 is a multi-platform game, it won't help sell hardware, and it will sell a lot more copies on the Xbox 360 than the Playstation 3, just like Grand Theft Auto 4.
Personally, if I was at Microsoft, I would get the price level of the Xbox 360 Arcade system to $199 as soon as possible, because that really would allow the Xbox 360 to easily outsell the Wii in North America and Europe from this time onward.
Similarly, it's nice that the 20GB Xbox 360 is now at $299, but Microsoft needs to make sure that a version of the Xbox 360 is always at $299 or less. When the 60GB version is released, it needs to be at $299.
Well, back to work putting advertisements online for people with the search engines. If you want to see what I do for businesses and organizations visit here: www.webforcenow.com
Ozzman,
Sad, but true: Sony doesn't have to sell as many copies to be successful because of their lower installation base (I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying how it is). If Nintendo didn't have the most spots, being the highest selling platform, that's bad for Wii software makers.
A 94% increase is amazing. I didn't expect anywhere near that much.
Brian
www.brianwoods.com
“This month’s success can be attributed to the exclusive blockbuster Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots"....which is ALREADY out of the top 5 software charts in all countries around the world, if not the top 10 (at least for the countries this site reports on anyways). If THAT'S their idea of a "blockbuster," wow, are they in for a rough ride.
The question remains, will they be able to hold the momentum? The strong sales in June were directly related to the highly anticipated release of MGS4. What is there to kepp sales up until Christmas?