Tall, dark, and coated in black plastic. Nope, not Darth Vader, I’m thinking of the Playstation 3, Sony’s gaming weapon in the home console fight against the Xbox 360.
Personally, I’ve always been a regular user of both the PS3 and the 360, but there is an indefinable quality I really like about the PS3 which means I *just* err on the side of being a PS3 fanboy. If it came to out and out war I’d fall in with the gathering Sony masses on the battlefield, but I wouldn’t be front line infantry, more offering support at the back perhaps.
Coming out as it did, almost a year and a half after the Xbox 360, and costing £145 more than the £280 original 360 price, it had a lot of work to do. You got more in the box, with Blu-Ray, wifi and a bigger hard disk than the 360 at the time, but it was still £425. It was a lot to ask of the console buying public, and it looked like they were doomed to fail.
Four years on, though, and it appears the tables have turned. A recent report from Strategy Analytics claims that there are now more PS3 consoles out there worldwide then there are Xbox 360s, a staggering statistic.
Partly this surprised me so much because of writing for this very site. Of course, Ready Up reviews and enjoys games on all consoles, but when we organise one of our many game nights, we always turn to the Xbox 360, primarily due to its undeniably greater ease of use when organising large groups of players. This means that we play a lot of 360, and it’s easy to forget the millions upon millions of others out there playing and enjoying their PS3s.
And what a lot of them there truly are. 43.4 million PS3 consoles are out there, compared to an also huge 42.9 million Xbox 360s. (Of course, it would be remiss of me to not mention the small white elephant in the room at this point – the Wii has sold 75.5 million consoles)
Of course, these figures always need to be considered before taking them at face value. PS3 fans in particular will ask how many of these machine sold were replacements for other broken machines? Due to the 360’s terrible reliability I personally have splashed out on three of them, so I must be skewing the figures, along with a lot of other people. Heaven only knows how many Ready Up’s Dan has been through.
Of course, the same goes for Sony – I have also had one failed PS3 and replaced it with a new one,and I know a number of other people in the same boat. 360 fans will say, yes, Sony have sold a lot of machines, but how many people are just using them as Blu-Ray players?
No-one knows for sure, but if these figures are right, Sony have certainly done well to move up from The Third Place into second, which is no small feat considering the incredibly strong competition and their late entry into the market. Well done, Sony, have yourselves a lollipop.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.