6 Things April's Gaming Numbers Won't Tell You

For starters, consider that (1) Sony's PS2 may have outsold its PS3 by a whopping 4 million units in part because Nintendo's Wii kept the candle burning, officially rejecting the cultural conviction that legacy processing power is necessarily "lesser." To the extent that's true, Sony may owe Nintendo a few karmic lunches.

(2) Or perhaps Nintendo owes Sony. Would we even have the Wii Remote without the Eye Toy? I know there's no hard causal link between the development of one or the other, but the Eye Toy was the first time we saw pictures of kids up on their feet and flailing around in front of TV screens en masse. No one talks about that, but it's true. And important for the same reasons it's worth remembering that fully textured first-person games like Origin's Ultima Underworld came well before id's Doom, as well as Looking Glass's System Shock before id's Quake.

(3) Sony sold 13.73 million PS2s versus 9.24 million PS3s for the annual sales period ending March 31, 2008. Which is perhaps what you get for trying to foist a $400-$500 hardware brick on consumers used to paying less than half that for a game system (Blu-ray or no). But never mind that -- who bought all those PS2s? As in who (what demographic, kids to tweens to parents) and where, as in where in the world? How many PS2 sales occurred in the U.S., Europe, and Japan versus countries with less developed economies?

(4) Does anyone doubt the DS and PSP are "consoles"? I mean in the sense that the tag "handheld" can be misleading, carrying with it a sense that you're somehow "compromising" in quality and substance. Think about it. The DS is roughly on par with the Nintendo 64 in terms of processing power (no slouch of a game system, that) and the PSP is analogous to Sony's PS2, a system that just outsold its considerably brawnier new sibling by over 4 million units. The DS costs $130, which is what systems like the SNES and Sega Genesis used to sell for at their height and with bundled games when I managed a Software Etc. in the mid 1990s. And the PSP without a game goes for $170, $40 more than the PS2 (They even sell component video hookups that let you run your PSP through a TV.) You can hold these little powerhouses in your hand, sure, but more and more, we're toting miniature "consoles" around in our pockets.

The power of a Nintendo 64 in your palm, with dual-screen and touchable stylus-driven innovations.

(5) Another way to look at that last one. Instead of assuming the DS and PSP are merely complementary game systems (to a Wii or 360 or PS3), how about asking how many PS3 and Xbox 360 sales are in fact lost entirely to booming sales of Nintendo and Sony's "handhelds"? In other words, how many of you bought a DS or PSP and decided "That's it, that's all I need"?

(6) Sony's software numbers in April, which the company claims represents "year-over-year growth of 410%," were finally in line with its hardware sales, suggesting that the system finally had a month where gaming -- not for-use-as-a-Blu-ray-player sales -- carried much of the water. Expect that trend to continue through May into the summer between Grand Theft Auto IV and upcoming exclusives like Metal Gear Solid 4. Exclusive or no, GTA IV may go on the books as the game that finally "launched" the PS3.

Re-Play

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Comments

i bought a psp(slim) and i bought a ps3. blu-ray was my reason because of my hdtv. gta4 made me feel more complete.
i know everyone has different stories...

chosendragon

May 16, 2008

9:18 AM PT

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