Microsoft expects PS3 to lead for a second month

I dont understand why people care about which console sells better per month. Of course PS3 is eventually gonna beat out 360 since the 360 has been out longer. What are the total sales.. that is what matters. This month to month stuff is meaningless.

@santa
It can?! I do not recall seeing this feature mentioned in the user's manual. Do I need a different SKU for that feature?? Please advise.

If you thought that the PS3 wouldn't end up out selling the Xbox360 your thinking is short sighted....

Although I don't buy the retail shortage excuse (from my observation, that situation cleared up mid-January), the 360 is still posting good numbers. It's selling better than it ever has. It's usually sold between 40-70K per week in the US (excluding holiday peak), and it's been routinely hitting 60-80K per week since Christmas.

It's not fat and ugly. But is has a good heart yes.

Meh I dont care, the games are still rolling in.

Perhaps they're trying to guarantee they can saturate the market in April/May for GTA4 and attempt to corner any system sells for that game? Either way it's a pretty boned up excuse.

Blu-Ray won the format war. Why are we surprised? Now, I'm a proud 360 owner, and have bashed the PS3 on many occasions. However, if Sony is finally settling on a single vision for the console, we could see some really good stuff on the PS3 in the future, aside from MGS4 and FFXIII. I look forward to seeing what it can do.

This is certainly good news for Sony, but the real test will come at the end of April with GTA IV. OF course, we won’t know until mid-June (that’s when the May NPD numbers will be out).

Um, I (clearly) love Snatcher, but was that in any way relevant?

How does your supply chain become less efficient? Shouldn't you constantly be tweaking and adjusting to better supply your retailers? Seeing as 360 sold more units in 2006 than it did in 2007, I guess they managed to figure out how to fuck that up too.

No one seemed to notice the 360 is upside down. lol.

I went to Best Buy yesterday and there was a mountain of Xbox 360's. Just to let you all know, since, you know, the rest of the world is having a shortage.

You guys have got to be kidding me. “Slow and steady” doesn’t mean anything when you’re nearly seven million units behind in the race. I love my PS3, but I just can’t see it catching up to the 360 in sales this generation.

Why do so many people care about these numbers? Its not like you'll get money if the PS3 outsells the 360... Or anything for that matter... Both consoles ( or better all 3 ) are doing great, and its great for us :-)

why else would the PS3 have dropped its price in the first year? and now with the new prices for the 360, its even better for the consumer, now we just have to wait for the PS3 to follow suit and once again I'll have the full generation...

Congrats to Sony and M$ ( not nintendo because they are a bunch of dicks that fuck the PAL-regions over )

@Speton: Maybe you got lost. Destructoid is the opposite place of where trolls go.

My bad Usetdabe props

Looks like 360 has a 6.7 million or so lead. To erase this lead, PS3 has to sell more worldwide than 360 a certain amount per week. Let's do math, in thousands.

6700 / 30 gain per week = 223 weeks. That's just over four years.

6700 / 50 gain per week = 134 weeks. About two and a half years to tie.

6700 / 70 gain per week = 95 weeks. That's about Christmas 2009.

February saw the PS3 with an average weekly sales advantage of about 60K. March's gap looks like it will be narrower. So if all stays equal (and it never does), it probably won't happen before Christmas 2009.

I'm with Thuper Hardcore.

Futureshop has a stack of 360's, I'm gessing around 20-30 units of various kinds, Walmarts shelfs a chalk full and the same applies for the Canadian Super Store. As well as about 5 Halo 3 legendary box set thing with the helmet going for $59.

There are no Wii's or Brawl to be found anywhere.

it dont matter to me really, the MGS4 version of the PS3 will be mine

I can find Brawl at any of the 3 electronic stores in walking distance from me. Don't know where you guys are looking...

I think this shortage of the higher end models is a well thought out tactic by MS. Not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but what is the main difference between the arcade, and pro other than the HD, headset, net and video cable. These 4 extras are either easily available as accessories on the shelves at all stores (with huge markups) or easy to ramp up production on. So really there is no reason MS couldn't ramp up production on the PRO in 2 seconds. All it takes is a different box and not putting those accessories in seperate retail packaging to sell individually.

What it really comes down to is how MS can squeeze an extra few bucks from the consumer that isn't making well educated purchasing choices. MS lose money on every console, so to make up money they accessorize the crap out of it. The 360 = the bedazzled console of this generation.

Xbox 360 Arcade
This is the box that is readily available at retail, and I think strategically so by MS's own greed. Here is everything needed to match the PRO SKU.

Arcade costs $279.99
20GB HDD $99.99
Headset $19.99 (pennies to make)
HD component cable $39.99 (pennies to make)

To match the PRO specs
Total $439.99

Xbox 360 Pro - $349.99
This is the box that is really scarce for some unknown reason according to MS (being sarcastic).

So basically MS is trying to squeeze an extra $90 bucks out of people for things that are more or less essential to enjoy the games they offer and cheap and easy to make quickly.

Wouldn't you try to sell someone the same thing for an extra $90 bucks if you could?

Not sure how the media and analysts haven't picked up on it, MS is very smart to work it this way and have suckers fall for it.