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Microsoft Concedes Console War, Declares 2nd Place

by Blake Ellison, Sep 05, 2008 2:34pm PDT
Related Topics – xbox 360, Hardware Sales

Microsoft has finally fessed up--Nintendo's Wii has won this generational battle in the console wars.

In a reversal of its "we're winning if you don't count the Wii" policy, the company behind the Xbox 360 has acknowledged the success of Nintendo's sold-out, remote-waggling wonder box and instead declared victory over rival Sony and its PlayStation 3.

In his best PR voice, Microsoft VP Don Mattick told BusinessWeek, "I'm not at a point where I can say we're going to beat Nintendo ... [but] we will sell more consoles this generation than Sony."

As of March of this year, worldwide console sales are listed below. Since then, the Wii has come close to 30 million sold and the PS3 has topped 14 million, but Microsoft has not released numbers for the same period.

  1. Wii - 24.45 million units

  2. Xbox 360 - 19 million units

  3. PlayStation 3 - 12.85 million units


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Comments

28 Threads* | 187 Comments
  • #169
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    By: zakazi x
    Reply
    Oi, I'm so sick of this argument. People saying "Wii isn't NextGennnnn!" and attach rates and if games are less or more fun/deep/hardcore/etc.

    I don't think MS, Sony, or Nintendo care about any of this, at the end of the day one thing matters: Profit. I think the game has changed largely with Nintendo going all Blue Ocean strategy on the industry, yet everyone still wants to talk about the game industry like its the 16bit era and everyone has the same strategy with different technology. Now we have 3 different strategies. At this point I think profit is the only thing that matters especially now that each company has a different approach to getting to that number (I mean do attach rates matter as much to a company who sells the console at a profit compared to the ones that sell it as a loss-leader?).

    So at this point I'm sick of unit numbers. It's not a standard unit anymore. It's important to publishers, but not necessarily as a success indicator.

    I think the far more interesting question was posed by another poster: Now that Nintendo has gone all blue ocean on everyone, how will their new market react to a new console? And is this strategy sustainable the way their hand held strategy has been? Likewise with Nintendo exposing whole new market segments - will Sony and Microsoft want to try and jump to them or expose their own ones?
    Sep 07, 2008 10:07am PDT

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.

  • #149
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    By: TheMongbat x
    Reply
    Worldwide, Sony looks a little better than they did. On the other hand, I recall that the Playstation is killing the Xbox in Japan, not so much because it is better, but because the credulous media over there has been happy to tell tales of exploding Xboxes starting fires and killing children. They've always been crushed by the local media, and the otaku have always been happy to believe them and declare Japan #1 on everything on earth.

    Of course, the RROD didn't help MSFT's rep any over there.

    However, in the U.S., which is still by far the biggest gaming market, with the highest attachment rate per unit, MSFT is teh w1n, at least for now. It has a commanding lead, and its online presence is simply beyond anything Sony has been able to come up with (we'll see what happens when Home gets up and running for real).
    Sep 06, 2008 7:10am PDT