Microsoft vs Sony

Over the last few weeks various sites have given their opinion in the console war and which one has particularly won 2011. All arguments that I have read have actually come off the back of some very well thought out decision processes.

A few weeks back IGN, in particular Colin Moriarty, published an opinion piece suggesting that the PS3 will beat the Xbox before this generation is over. He gave a very deep opinion of the conjectures of lifetime sales, world averages and actually made a bit of headway with me. Obviously I disagree with his opinion but feel that his views do have a good set of reasons behind them.

He spoke a lot about numbers but for us 360 users it’s interesting to see that his argument that the 360’s current lead in sales over the PS3 is due to the earlier release. The point he didn’t mention was that the system was able to achieve more then the market share and that people brought it not just because it was the next generation, but because it was an amazing piece of kit. Obviously it was also the first HD console on the market which does help somewhat.

The early adopters like me have backed the 360 from the start and I’m pleased to see that Microsoft continues to improve the Xbox community and have even increased sales this year by 20% over the same period in 2010. In fact the Xbox 360 currently holds more than 40% of the whole market share which in itself is very impressive.

 What if the PS3 had the earlier release? Would their head start have fared better than Microsoft’s? The biggest feature of the PS3 was its ability to play Blu-ray movies and which only improve the viewing quality on HDTV’s. Unfortunately for Sony the HD market didn’t really kick off until 2007 and this was thanks to some aggressive pricing in the 2006 Christmas period. Had the PS3 launched in 2005 before the Xbox 360 then it would have suffered due to the investment that was involved for many non-HD gamers.

The other big factor that we need to consider is the exclusives for each console as the top 50 games on each platform are usually multi-platform IP’s anyway. In fact the PS3 has 16 exclusive titles on its top 50 list whereas the Xbox 360 only has 15. The amazing thing about this is that although the PS3 has more exclusive titles and a worldwide unit total of just over 57 million the Xbox 360 has sold over 82 million units of its exclusive titles.

Overall the PS3 has suffered from both poor early decision making and generally bad marketing but has fought extremely well against their odds. The Xbox 360 however seems to be stronger than ever and looks like it is the sure fire bet to win the battle of the HD generation.

[UPDATE] – Microsoft announced this week that they have sold 960 thousand Xbox 360 units. This actually makes it the most successful seven days in the history of the consoles lifecycle. In fact 800,000 of these units were sold in a single 24 hour period (presumably the US shopping day Black Friday)