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PlayStation 2 Outselling Xbox 360 in U.S. 98

Posted by Zonk from the sony's-not-out-of-it-yet dept.
Aviran Mordo writes to mention an Ars Technica article about the sales struggle between the PS2 and Xbox 360. Since the launch, the PS2 has managed to maintain the lead. April was the first month Microsoft's new console eeked out Sony's old one, possibly as a result of the ramp-up in production. From the article: "I should note that we caution against putting too much weight on these sales estimates, especially in a comparative sense. The PS2 and the Xbox 360 are at opposite ends of their 'console lifecycles,' and the two are priced quite far apart as well (e.g., $129 vs. $299, PS2, Xbox 360 Core respectively). We are impressed, however, by the PS2's continually strong sales, even as many gamers turn their eyes towards the next-generation. These sales will help keep Sony strong and stable, even in the face of a disappointing PlayStation 3 launch, should fate take that turn." These sales may be bolstered as the year moves on by the releases of God of War 2, Final Fantasy XII, and Okami, all of which are for the PS2.
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PlayStation 2 Outselling Xbox 360 in U.S. More

PlayStation 2 Outselling Xbox 360 in U.S.

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  • Not a comparison at all. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dabug911 ( 714069 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @10:49AM (#15516831) Homepage
    Hardly a far comparison when you look at price point. I would rather spend 129 then 600 any day for a system that is still a decent gaming system.
    • Since when is an Xbox360 $600? The $299 one is closest to capabilities to Playstation and is not all that expensive as consoles go. I personally haven't bought one yet but that's just because I haven't noticed any games I want to play on it yet. I'll definately have one by the time Mass Effect comes out though (and by that time they'll probably be even cheaper).
      • Yeah except that the Core Xbox360 doesn't have anything close to the number of good games the PS2 has.
        • That's a valid argument, and primarily the reason that I don't have a 360 yet (I do have a PS2, but I've also got GC, DC, and Xbox). I was merely saying that it doesn't make sense to say PS2 is doing better because people would rather spend $130 instead of $600. The Xbox360 doesn't cost $600, it's $300 (or $400 for the spiffy version), and the price isn't the reason PS2 is selling more.

          As I said in my earlier post, I'll be buying the 360 as soon as some games that I want to play come out for it. The pric
          • I'm in the same boat as you. I've got a PS2 and it does the trick for me and has the games I want available for it. I look at the Xbox360 and the PS3 and the first question I ask is "What >must< have game is going to compel me to buy this console?".

            So far, the games that have been announced for the PS3, none fulfill that criteria.

            Now, if Insomnia was to release a new R&C game for the PS3, I'd buy one in a heartbeat...
          • I haven't bought the 360, and probably never will, but a $600 Blu-Ray player with all the dohickeys that ALSO plays all my existing games sounds good to me. Plus, next generation games, too!
    • Well, if you're spending $129 then $600, you're spending $729 total. Perhaps you didn't mean to use the adverb then, which indicates that one follows the other in succession. Either way, where in the world did you pull that $600 figure from? Even the Premium version of the 360 "only" costs $399.
      • My guess is that the GP is mixing up the 360 and the projected price point of the PS3
      • actually, like the /. posting, the parent poster was skewing information to really say what they wanted to say rather than what is actually there. just briefly checking the ebgames site i can see that there are many bundles of xbox 360s to pick from, lowest being $394.96 and highest being $589.91 (600 bucks omg), and actually if you look at ALL the bundles they even have the "Xbox 360 Pro System Totally Serious Bundle" for $1,385.76. perhaps he's putting too much weight on the bundles? checking amazon.com y
    • You're right. It isn't a realistic comparison at all. I expect the PS3 sales will be strong but will look meagre by comparison with the PS2 for a while yet.

      One thing worth noting is that cheaper price doesn't guarantee more sales. Those same charts which compare the PS2 to the XBox360 also show that in the US, seven PS2s are selling for every NGC or XBox (the old one) sold. That's pretty impressive seeing as the PS2 is way past its sell-by date and probably the least capable of any console. Interestingly

      • Wait, the PSP is outselling the DS? Where is this and what is your source on that? Last time I checked, the DS was outselling everything.
        • I believe most of the numbers quoted "on the web" are for Japan. In the US, its a much, much closer race. Hopefully the DS Lite will let them pull ahead though.
        • My source is the sales figures link in the article that this story points to. The PSP has consistently outsold the DS since late last year. Not by a huge amount, but 10% or so. Considering how much more it costs that is quite an accomplishment. Considering how poor / mediocre most PSP titles have been in the last 12 months doubly so. Though games on the DS have been hardly anything to write about either.

          Despite that, the PSP is starting to get some great titles so I think its over the hump. The strong sal

    • Invalid comparison and an old news discussion. Ars Technica had a thread about this started way back in January which covered all aspects of the discussion. http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f /48409524/m/224000827731 [arstechnica.com]
    • That's the problem with any new generation of gaming. Why even bother buying a new console, as long as there's still some life left in an older, cheaper console. 360 was released too early, but even now, and going into the time that PS3 and Wii are released, I really don't think this generation should be over yet. The real "revolution" in the gaming industry needs to come in not screwing over gamers in making them spend between 200 and 600 every four years. That is the real thing bogging down the industry.
    • First of all your pricing is completely wrong. Second assuming that for some odd reason your numbers ARE right then what is MS going to do when th Wii comes out and is only $199?
  • I was in Costco yesterday, and they had a huge rack of Xbox360 systems right next to the front door. Nobody was interested.

    Microsoft did a good job of manufacturing an artificial shortage [slashdot.org] just after the release date, but now the truth is out...

    [And to prove I'm not a Sony fanboy: Costco also had a ton of PSPs, but no Nintendo DS or DS Lite systems.]

  • How will Sony use this to sell the PS3? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by /ASCII ( 86998 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @10:58AM (#15516889) Homepage
    I'm curious about how Sony will be able to translate the PS2 popularity into PS3 sales. The 100% backward compatibility promise is a great start, but I think that to sell the PS3 to all the people who don't have a HDTV, you need something better than 'this $500 machine does everything your $100 does'. No more memory cards, wireless controllers, possibly faster load times are all nice, but not enough. And I don't see consumers flocking to HD movies either. I own a HD projector, and HD movies _do_ look better on it than plain DVDs, but it is by no stretch the same landslide change that VHS->DVD was.

    A boatload of highly desirable PS3 excluisives to popular PS2 franchises would possibly seal the deal. But most of the upcoming sequels, like Gran Turismo HD, seem more like HD versions of the same game. That won't sell any consoles to the non-HD consumers, which are still the majority, even in the early adopter bracket.
    • Oh it's simple, new games. When FFXIII comes out as a PS3 exclusive they're upgrade a ton of people to the PS3. Same with a number of other PS exclusive titles as long as they keep the exclusives locked down people will pay the money for the upgrade, eventually anyway.
    • I'm a big playstation fan, and I have a couple dozen friends who are also into it, and when I told then the ps3 whould cost $600, 5 of them said they didn't care and whould get one at lauch, 12 said they'd wait for MGS4 launch to get theirs and the rest said they would wait for a $100 price drop. Although this is hardly a scientific method, I think this is an example of what sony is aiming for: Milk the fanatics, then drop the price and take the rest.
    • The point is, it'll eventually happen when more people have shiny HD TVs. The question is, how soon, and can Microsoft and Sony not do too badly in the interim (i.e. when Xbox360s and PS3s are only selling to enthusiastic early adopters, people with HDTVs and too much money).

      I'm in Ireland, and people are being quite silly here with money at the moment. HDTVs, even rubbish ones without HDCP, or bad picture quality (low LCD response time), or rubbish plasma screens (dimming by half every XX months), are sell
      • Right. Maybe America still hasn't noticed yet, but there is huge demand for anything screaming HDTV ready, worldwide, right now. I mean, mind you, it's just because of a stupid championship in a sports game called soccer, or real football, but it's like that, TV sales are soaring right now.
        Which couldn't have come at a better time, at least for SONY, BluRay, and HDTV as well. Those precious big screens will need to be filled with appropriate content as soon as the games are over (sic). Which is why EA Sport

    • Re:How will Sony use this to sell the PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:37AM (#15517176)
      A very, very, very compelling case for the PS3 could be made if the thing were a genuine DVR, could be made into one, or at least was able to cache all sorts of multimedia including DVDs.

      While I'm sure there are legal issues with ripping DVD, BD content, I don't see them as being that much different than ripping music. If I own a DVD, why can't I rip it? Naturally it could encrypt the movie so it plays nowhere else. If Sony were smart, they'd offer this feature and ensure the PS3 also featured an online store where you could buy more content for reasonable prices. A reasonable price would be a timelimited movie for the same price as a rental, e.g. $6.

      This is all hypothetical of course. In the past Sony would sell a device that hacked off their customer's hands off if their media divisions told them to. Here's hoping that a clue finally sinks in after years of mistakes. Aside from the UMD, the PSP actually offers a pretty good example of how you can make a cool multimedia device without crippling it to death in the process. UMDs were done to death by pure greed, but movie ripping via a memory stick is actually quite alright.

    • What HD projector do you have? I find any current movie looks much better in HD than on DVD.
    • is the main selling point.

      I think my wife said it best:

      Me: So, the XBOX 360 won't let you play your older Xbox games unless they are specifically supported.
      Her: That's gay. Why would I want to have to buy the same games again with 360 tacked on?
      Me: I dunno, but the playstation 3 will be 100% backwards compatible.
      Her: It better be or I'll just buy another PS2.

      Her game library is somewhere around 40-50 games on the PS2 not including her PS1 games.

      PS1 games only recently were pushed off the shelves at Gamesto
      • I have a hard time believing your wife would say 'that's gay' (or she's just incredibly ignorant). Unless you call your under 18 year old boyfriend 'your wife'.
        • Don't hate, just cause my wife is more vulgar than you isn't any reason to feel emasculated. It's not like she also runs an erotic link blog [stumbleupon.com], but we won't even go there.

          It's also not like she isn't educated enough to understand the original etymology either and having been on the recieving end of her explanations of the pejorative usage (sometimes also spelled ghey) I'd say she's a far sight removed from ignorant.

          If it helps you any, think of it as equivalent to Michael Jackson's bad. If you feel it is de
    • They won't. In fact, they'll be competing with themselves.

      Expect to see this headline: PlayStation 2 Outselling PlayStation 3

  • All about the price (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scolby ( 838499 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:01AM (#15516910) Journal
    I've been an XBox guy for the past three years, but with the appearance of the 360, the new games market for the original XBox dried up pretty quickly. I needed a new console - so why spend all that money on a 360 when there are plenty of good PS2 games that I haven't played that are available at cheap prices? I'll get a 360 eventually - but for now, the PS2 is just fine.

    • The longevity of Sony's console sales does really point out the mountain MS was trying to climb, doesn't it?

      You say the original XBox market for new games disappeared, and it's true -- there's almost nothing new coming. Meanwhile Sony can rely on plenty of third party legs for the PS2; even if the PS3 outright crashes, there's still some cushion there.

      Anyone who's scoffed at the idea of "market share" or said it was overrated should think about how much critical mass MS would have needed here. Even a fi

    • you hit it dead on, IMHO. The 360 is easily more than double the current PS2 price. PS2 has a massive , proven game library and a ton of "Greatest Hits" ~$20 titles, so for the price of one 360 (let's go with the $299 number thats been flying around for this example), you can get a PS2 $129, around seven greatest hits titles and some to spare for a memory card, accessories......or you have a xbox 360 basic setup. Hmmmmmmmm...

  • Here we go again... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Senobyzal ( 826207 )
    *sigh* Time for another fanboy thread, I guess. Look, both the PS2 and XBox360 are great systems, with lots of good games. The PS has the advantage of a larger catalog, the XBox the advantage of power and "newness". They don't even target the same audience, IMO; they are in totally different worlds in terms of price point, although I do believe that most die-hard gamers will end up owning both.

    This same conversation has been going on at Ars (and to a slightly lesser degree, here at /.) for months now. Th

    • I think the reason for the fanatic dedication to a particular console brand is the need for consumers to justify to themselves the huge investment they made in their purchase. All of the consoles are expensive, and with a halfway decent selection fo games and accessories you're looking at several thousand dollars invested. Nobody wants to feel as though they made a "mistake", and that the other guy's product might have been the better choice.

      Really? Compared to the cost of a good mountain bike, or the cost
      • I think most of the fanboy-ism comes from the same forces which cause "right vs. left" political hating... It's the sports-fan mentality of "our side" vs. "your side." The urge to rally for the "home team" is overpowering to most people. Just about everybody has fallen in to that trap at one time or another, even with debates about things which cost you nothing, such as BSD vs. GNU licenses. It's just a natural (irrational) element of human behavior.

        Even "home team" loyalty is questionable when few, if any,
    • I think the reason for the fanatic dedication to a particular console brand is the need for consumers to justify to themselves the huge investment they made in their purchase.

      Speaking as an admitted Nintendo fanboy, I cheer them on because I genuinely think they do good stuff.

      All of the consoles are expensive

      Are they? My Gamecube with a free game was $150, my "used" (returned by someone after buying it the day before) PS2 was $110. Unless i'm buying a rarity or a new release that I absolutely must have imme
    • I've long since stopped buying games that are "beat the game, try to trade for some miserable percentage of original price". I use GameFly for all of those types of games, and if Netflix would add games, then I would drop GameFly. The only games I buy now are ones that I'll play many times in the future against other people.
    • Look, both the PS2 and XBox360 are great systems, with lots of good games.

      Do me a favour and list those 'lots of good games' for Xbox360. Seriously. Because my 360 just shit itself after 11 days (random freezing issue), and while I'll return it to EB to get a replacement and give them another two strikes before simply demanding a refund, I'm not sure why I'm bothering.

      I've got three racing games, one of which I have a virtually identical version of on PSP (Ridge Racer), and one on Xbox1 (Burnout Reven

  • Is this a good thing for Sony? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:09AM (#15516966)
    I mean, it's probably not good at all for MS. But I would think that people choosing to purchase a PS2 in this late stage of the game, probably won't buy a PS3 at/near launch. Before the 360 came out, sales of the X-Box 1 dropped.

    Actually, on the other hand, this probably just people replacing broken PS2s. Which such a huge userbase, you'll see substantial turn-around for replacement systems. I know, myself that I need to purchase a new PS2 because my original one died (and I don't want to give up my game library).

    Oh. And I have no plans on purchasing a PS3. Too expensive, and I'm having serious doubts that it's going to be the leader of the next generation. (And if it's not the leader, it won't get the 3rd party games. And the 3rd party games are the only reason to have a PlayStation)
    • Could the sales of the PS2 indicate that people have little confidence in the PS3? If I wanted a PS3, I wouldn't buy a PS2 - the PS3 will have backwards compatibility. However, if I didn't have any confidence in Sony's PS3, I might buy a PS2 instead for the cheap price-point and large library.

      There are a ton of factors that might be contributing to the still-strong PS2 sales. Between price, library, PS3 cost, Xbox 360 supply, and few killer next-gen apps, this seems like something MS needs to keep an eye
  • That a lot of the ps2s could be people buying their 2nd or 3rd system because they don't last very long. Xbox 360 hasn't been out long enough for that to have to happen yet.

  • Age of Console has something to do with it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Big Sean O ( 317186 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:18AM (#15517019)
    As consoles age, the quality of their games get better and better. That's because the programmers learn all the ways to wring out performance. When I look at my oldest games (GTA 3 and the Sims, both state of the art at the time) and compare them to some of the newer games (Shadow of the Colossus, the Warriors, and Dragon Quest VIII), it's clear the quality of the animation has improved.

    On the other hand, game play seems to be more static. I haven't seen proof that Xbox 360 games are any better 'games', just better looking.

    So, since the game play is a wash, and PS2 games are the best-looking they've ever been, it boils down to extra money for the promise of future performance.
    • Age has another aspect to it -- replacement hardware. I'm on my second PS2, a power surge after a car hit a power pole in my neighborhood took out the first one about eight months ago. I've seen others here post that they are on their third. A most interesting statistic would be how many of these are second time purchases.
    • Taking Moore's law into account, Sony could probably issue an updated PS2 that comes close to the new generation consoles in 'user experience' and costs about the same as a current generation PS2.

      That might cannibalize the PS3, but then again, if the PS3 is priced to appeal only to hardcore gamers (or people looking for a cheap blu-ray player), it might make sense to have an entry out there that is more competitive with the Xbox 360 and the Wii. A PS2 with a faster processor, more memory and disk might fil
  • Judging from the number of times my friends have had to replace their PS2 (usually from a failed DVD drive), I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the PS2 sales are to replace consoles. The PS2 is by far the most prone to breaking in its current generation, and it is probably only now that people may hold off on replacing their broken PS2 in anticipation for picking up a PS3 in November. Heck, at the $130 price point, I imagine that a number of PS2 owners will still bite the bullet and by a new PS2,

  • Not terribly surprising (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think the 360 finds itself in a similar situation to the Dreamcast. It has a substantial market lead, and early adopter are really enjoying it, but it doesn't have a killer app yet that is driving people to buy it over the much cheaper previous generation.
    Oddly enough, sales of the 360 might be better if the PS3 was out. As it is, it's a situation where the 360 is nice, but is it really worth almost 3 times as much as a PS2? However, if the PS3 was out, the comparison would be, the PS3 is nice, but is it

    • Hey. Don't blame Microsoft for the fact that Oblivion didn't properly implement some sort of ModIsBoobies switch. I mean, before it had to be re-rated, Oblivion pretty much was the 360 killer app.

  • Sony's consoles tend to have long lifespans. Its only recently they stopped selling ps1s.
    The PS2 lasted many years and due to "interesting" achitecture games shipped now appear better than those released early. The lifespan of the ps2 was 2 years longer than xbox and 1 year longer than gamecube (before replacement with newer model.) Sony will probably contine selling ps2s for another couple years. Xbox 1 is a dead end, because most of the games aren't really backward compatible with the 360, and many that a

  • Hard Cap On Xbox 360 Userbase (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:37AM (#15517181)
    The poor sales of the 360 really shouldn't surprise anyone.

    Console cycles are won and lost on two fundamental pillars:

    1) Manufacturing technology

    2) Exclusive IP

    Neither of those two all important areas have improved one bit for Microsoft with the 360. Microsoft has no ability to manufacture their own hardware and no ability to process shrink their hardware to reduce costs over time. Due to the billions they burned through on the first Xbox project the Xbox 360 team is being kept on a tight leash. The Microsoft of the late 90s is no more and the willingness to throw billions at projects is long gone for anything outside of search or their core OS/app markets. So the Xbox team was forced to kill off the first Xbox early and rush very flakey 360 hardware out the door leading to the staggering number of defective 360s you are hearing about even seven months after the console hit the store shelves. There are numerous people who are already on their fifth 360!

    As to the second area, Microsoft has failed to land any new exclusive IP that they didn't have for the first Xbox. People buy consoles to play exclusive titles. That has always been the case and that will always be the case as long as the console market exists. There is nothing for anyone who didn't buy the first Xbox to go out and spend 400+ bucks on the new Xbox. Which is exactly what you hear from people who talk about why they have no plans on buying a 360. Nothing the system has interests them.

    The first Xbox sold around 22 million or so. The userbase was made up of:

    1) Dreamcast refugees

    2) PC gamers

    3) Microsoft fans

    Microsoft appears to have mostly lost the PC gamers segment due to the weak 360 hardware. With the first Xbox PC gamers could buy an Xbox instead of a new video card and have a gaming system that was more powerful than any PC for a year or so. That wasn't the case with the 360. The 360 was already graphically behind PCs before it even hit store shelves. PC gamers are going back to their PCs and buying new video cards and forgoing picking up 360s this time around.

    Plus you have the hardware defect nightmare turning the rest of Microsoft's core target demographic off and sitting on the sidelines until there is some indication that the problems have been solved. So you are basically looking at some fairly large percentage of the existing 22 million or so Xbox owners abandoning the platform. Which pretty much tracks the poor rate the 360 has been selling. Right now the 360 is selling at somewhere between half to two-thirds the rate of the first Xbox.

    These latest sales figures for Microsoft have to be gut check time for the 360 team. The current sales rate of the 360 is putting it in sub-Dreamcast installed base range for the console. Something dramatic has to happen soon. The most obvious is some huge price cut to get the existing Xbox fanbase to overcome their hesitations to buy the 360.

    However, with both Sony and Nintendo coming out with free online services, Microsoft is looking at a situation where they are going to be forced to match and drop the 50 dollar a year charge for playing games online. If Microsoft has to do a massive price cut on the system and drop the online play charge they are almost certainly looking at another multi-billion dollar loss for the Xbox project.

    With the continuing drop in Microsoft's stock over the past five years and the struggle they have been having to meet street projections each quarter over the past year, one has to wonder how much of a stomach Redmond has to soldier on with a console that is looking more and more like another gigantic source of red ink.

    • The number of defective 360s was grossly over-reported. Even slashdot had articles on that subject. The PS2 also had major hardware issues at release and with all of the brand spanking new and untested technology in the PS3 you think this will be any different? I've had my 360 since day 1 with no problems and I know at least 5 friends haven't had issues with theirs either. With the "staggering number of defective 360s" you'd imagine at least one of us would have had a bad one.

      MS may not have landed much

      • Re:Hard Cap On Xbox 360 Userbase (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You are missing the point of the original poster.

        Compare what is on the table/in the stores now. At this moment. Not in the future. Forget about vapourware like the ps3 or future xbox360 releases. You cannot buy them. They are not in the stores.

        The current battle takes place between the ps2 with a huge collection of (cheap, platinum edition) games versus the much more (2.5x more) expensive xbox360 with a limited catalogue of (expensive) games.

        The numbers say that customers prefer the ps2 by a reasonable mar
      • Both IGN and Loading (Sweden's biggest console forum) ran unofficial polls on their sites as to the number of X360 owners, and of those, how many who had gotten one (or more!) defective consoles.

        The polls clocked in, both, at ~15%.

        (IGNs had 700 or so participants, Loading's about 200)

        • The problem with these polls is that somebody who has gotten a defective box is much more likely to "complain" about it via the poll than somebody who has not. The other problem would be people who complain their 360 is defective when in reality it could be a buggy game or, notoriously, lockups that occur in Live play.

          In related news, I just bought a DS Lite today, and Brain Age locked up at one point. Not a great initial experience to have, but I won't draw too many conclusions from it.

          • I agree, but in this case the poll was done via forum posts, and it was easily seen that it was both the forum regulars who had problems (and it was the list of total owners that had a lot of unknown/new names) - and the problems were not simple lockups but real defective consoles (this applies to Loading, I don't know about IGN).

            15% with a large uncertainty, in two separate polls, is still a statistical problem when Microsoft claims they're really below 3%.

  • It's the games.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @11:39AM (#15517200)
    Why do you buy any object that delivers content? The quality of the content.

    Why'd you buy a DVD player? The movies on DVD with their superior audio/video quality and that the movies YOU wanted to watch were available in this format. Otherwise we'd have stayed with VHS.

    Why do you choose an operating system? The applications. If my customers send me msword docs all day long, i should be running windows as I'm in the best position to have 100% compatibility with their documents. Windows is more expensive to purchase than linux, but if I cannot run Outlook/excel/word/whatever then the cost of windows is a necessary and mandatory cost.

    Why is PS2 sales still high? It's not the cost of the game machine, but that there are HUNDREDS of games available for it. With a large variety in the type of games available, any new consumer is more likely to find a game they want to play on the PS2 than on the xbox360 which still has only a few games.

    If PS3 is backwards compatible with the PS2, it will be a slam dunk as people can still play their old games, if PS3 is not backwards compatible it will suffer from the same problems as the xbox360
    • I've personally thought of buying a PS2 - and I have an xBox and a GameCube - because some of the games at E3 will release for the PS2 regardless.

      But, I'm still waiting for the Wii, which I'll be buying, so I would probably buy used games at EBX for any PS2, now that the price is so low.

      Even if Sony did badly at E3, I don't sense anyone deciding to buy a 360 because of it - most either decided to get a Wii, or might get a PS3 if they drop the DRM, the price, and the rootkits.
    • Certainly cost plays a significant role in the continued success of the PS2. The hardware alone is a tremendous value in comparison to the cost of any next-gen console or PC. The laggard/late adopter market segment would be price sensitive, right?
    • "If PS3 is backwards compatible with the PS2, it will be a slam dunk as people can still play their old games,"

      Why would I buy a $700 system that plays my old games when I can just keep using my PS2?

      PS3 is ahead of its time, pure and simple. It is future proofed (assuming developer interest is still there when people get around to wanting higher-def systems in four years) at the cost of price and dev time, and only time will tell whether or not consumers will go to that dance.

      It is anything but a slam du
    • Why do you buy any object that delivers content? The quality of the content

      Wrong. First comes availability of the content. Quality differs between contents.

      Why'd you buy a DVD player? The movies on DVD with their superior audio/video quality and that the movies YOU wanted to watch were available in this format. Otherwise we'd have stayed with VHS

      BS. That's rather because you could access and operate the media faster (no rewind to do for example), because different language are available (only one on a VHS)

  • Hardcore Dreamcast And Xbox Fans (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The only people I see showing any interest in the 360 appear to be the most hardcore of existing/former Xbox and Dreamcast owners. I have never heard or seen anyone who is a Sony or Nintendo owner show even the slightest interest in the 360. And there seems to be a huge number of former Xbox owners who are turning to Nintendo or Sony this gen.

    The latest worldwide sales figures for the 360 put it at right around two million sold(not shipped!) after seven months. After five years in the console market Microso

  • The PS2 price just dropped to $129. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday June 12, 2006 @02:07PM (#15518241) Homepage
    At that price, of course it's ahead of the $400 product.
  • I think a lot of the wait has to do with people waiting for the second revision of the 360 to come out. Just about everyone I talk to says they wont buy a 360 because they overheat. As soon as a newer revision comes out that alleviates that issue, you might see some more sales come in. I'm also guessing that people are trading in their old systems for the newer smaller revised ps2 since older ps2's were notorious for having drive issues, and the newer size gives them a lot more room on their entertainment c
  • I noticed this just the other day in my local Target store. Only a single PS2 in stock, while there were 6 or 7 Platinum edition Xbox 360s in the case. Thought it was a bit interesting that it is now easier to get a 360 as opposed to a PS2. My local Costco had a pile of 360s a week or two ago as well.

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