NPD analyst Mat Piscatella “US Hardware install base 71 months in 1) Wii 2) PS2 3) PS4 4) Xbox 360 5) Xbox One 6) PS1 7) PS3 (Updated)

Hybrid Rainbow · Oct 30, 2019

Toni said:
4 PlayStations in the Top 7 is nutty.

Nobody is shaking Sony from dominance again in the console market next-gen.

That console market lockdown and hold is stronger than ever.

That's why this generation was quite literally the worst generation to screw up as badly as MS did. With the advent of digital sales and services, had MS got their heads out of their asses, they could have continued from 360 to Xbone and crushed Sony. Of course they didn't and the rest is history.

KenobiLTS · Oct 30, 2019

MalcomFleX said:
Better hardware, better games, better indie support, better online infrastructure.

Well in the US it was crazy, but in UK not really. I wonder how those didn't affect it there and PS3 outsold it.

MalcomFleX · Oct 30, 2019

EndedS said:
Well in the US it was crazy, but in UK not really. I wonder how those didn't affect it there and PS3 outsold it.

PS3 didnt outsell the 360 in the UK. UK was 360 country.

N.Domixis · Oct 30, 2019

Sony probably doesn't miss those 360 days. Looking forward to what they pull off next gen.

KillerMan91 · Oct 30, 2019

EndedS said:
Well in the US it was crazy, but in UK not really. I wonder how those didn't affect it there and PS3 outsold it.

PS3 didn't outsell X360 in UK. X360 outsold PS3 by big margin in UK (also outsold Wii just like in US).

Nuclear Muffin · Oct 30, 2019

ZiggyPalffyLA said:
I'd imagine it being the first HD console (and having a year head start on the PS3) helped a lot. That launch lineup was badddd.

It's because it got a second life with Kinect, and because the Wii was brutally sabotaged by more or less the entire gaming industry outside of Nintendo (and Nintendo had no choice but to abandon the platform after 2010 in order to support the launch of the 3DS and Wii U; leaving the platform with literally only three major titles for two whole years after the release of Donkey Kong Country Returns).

BoxingIsCool said:
Xbox one numbers really aren't that bad when you consider how badly they handled this gen

They are when you consider that around 70-80% of their WW sales come from the US...

ericsp17 · Oct 30, 2019

hikarutilmitt said:
I'm not seeing how it doesn't matter. It may have been in the several hundred thousand but a class action about a very serious issue that made headlines everywhere isn't a non-factor. The software ratio would actually be a bit inverted from expectations, if anything, because if a hypothetical sell-through of software versus systems were, say, 10:1 (which is only this low for simplicity) then the 360 could have potentially averaged to 8.5-9.5 with them all, possibly lower. It was that widespread. If you knew enough people at repair shops and game store and some sales positions and how often a RROD story came through you'd laugh. Before the major cooling system revamps happened, it was literally a matter of when, not if, as they failed after a fairly specific number of hours of sustained play.

Hell, a warranty survey showing a failure rate of 23.9% is not insignificant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

RRoD was bad but I don't think that many people ran out and bought another one. MS offered free repairs pretty early on which is how most rational people dealt with it. I had to send it in twice which sucked, and I certainly wasn't going to buy another. People generally don't reward companies who sold them a defective product by buying it again. There's no way it represents a significant number.

Xyber · Oct 30, 2019

In the long run, the RRoD probably helped the sales of 360 quite a bit. Most people I knew had to buy a new one eventually if their launch consoles lasted past the warranty but eventually suffered their inevitable fate. I got one replacement from MS and then had to buy a slim when that one died.

NekoNeko · Oct 30, 2019

For a second i thought switch is selling worse than i thought before i realized it hasn't been out for 71 months.

Fredrik · Oct 30, 2019

hikarutilmitt said:
For a 71-month run, it was definitely helped by the year head-start on the PS3 and Wii and then cutting prices and revisions. Cynically, the RROD before the mass warranty replacements could also be a factor. I'd still like to know the numbers, if possible, of 360s bought after a RROD, warranty or not. I was a victim of the "just after that third year" failure, and I took good care of mine. I personally knew a lot of people who bought a second (or even third or fourth!) system because of the RROD.

Yeah I sent mine in for RROD fixes 3 times. But I "only" bought two Xbox 360, one Core and one Slim.

But to be fair, it's exactly the same today. There aren't 100 million PS4 owners. If you look at enthusiasts you'll see that many bought a launch console, then a Slim and finally a Pro. Same thing with Xbox One with people buying the launch console, Xbox One S and finally a Xbox One X.

TheGhost · Oct 30, 2019

With the abysmal numbers on Xbox One I'm seriously surprised i have yet to run into repeat matches against the same people.

Loan Wolf · Oct 30, 2019

nightstalker962 said:
PS3 deserved better in the US.

Not with that $499 / $599 launch price; $499 may be acceptable today adjusting to inflation but not by 2006 standards. They did improve at the later life cycle of that SKU with a great library

Papacheeks · Oct 30, 2019

Proven said:
Considering the PS3 outsold the 360 based on what I've read here it's actually not that bad that the Xbox is right behind it

It is bad, because this is US only from what you posted. XBox's main market is US\UK. Open the flood gates if you get WW data.

Pancracio17 · Oct 30, 2019

Sony is the only consistently good hardware maker lmao. Like really, its actually kinda impressive that they havent fucked it up once yet, and im pretty sure they wont with the PS5 too.

TheGhost said:
With the abysmal numbers on Xbox One I'm seriously surprised i have yet to run into repeat matches against the same people.

They aint that abysmal in a vacuum. Theyre that bad cause MS was coming off the 360 and just completely botched it. Also depends on the game (repeat players on "dead games" like TF1 are common).

hikarutilmitt · Oct 30, 2019

Fredrik said:
Yeah I sent mine in for RROD fixes 3 times. But I "only" bought two Xbox 360, one Core and one Slim.

But to be fair, it's exactly the same today. There aren't 100 million PS4 owners. If you look at enthusiasts you'll see that many bought a launch console, then a Slim and finally a Pro. Same thing with Xbox One with people buying the launch console, Xbox One S and finally a Xbox One X.

I'm sure tertiary purchases at-will aren't low, but repurchasing due to failure isn't uncommon. You suddenly have a bunch of games you cannot play because your system broke outright versus buying an upgraded/sidegraded version of the same thing because you wanted to. Hell, I do know people who bought an S when it came out just because they wanted to stave off a potential RROD in the original units, Jaguar or not. I know of at least a few people from a previous job who bought multiple 360s because they were in the middle of a game like Skyrim and didn't want to wait for MS to send a new one (plus they were gigantic 360 fanboys).

OG_Thrills · Oct 30, 2019

BoxingIsCool said:
Xbox one numbers really aren't that bad when you consider how badly they handled this gen

If you remember that NA is the XBOX's strongest market it's actually abysmal.

Lokimaster · Oct 30, 2019

360 sold a lot in the US, that year head start helped them a lot there.

Man how times have changed.
Amazing how the Ps2 did everwhere, thats crazy

Lyrick · Oct 30, 2019

Last Gen just looks nuts compared to what came before and after.

The PS2 is ahead, but it's the only representative of that Gen
The 360, Wii and PS3 are all represented in that list with the 360 and the Wii in very prominent placements.
This Gen however has its pairings of PS & XB entities rounding out the bottom of the list with successors only a year away

Comparing this gens 71 month mark to 71 months into the 360s life cycle when the Xbox One was still 2 years out, it feels like there was one hell of a drop off this Gen.

LittleAlchemist · Oct 30, 2019

I find it weird that PS1 is above PS4 for sales-pace honestly. The PS1 had something like 22-28 million of it's sales *after* the generation ended, and while I assume a lot of that is most likely in countries that Playstation was expanding into at the time (where PS1 being very cheap and new to that market would be a huge selling point), it's still odd to see it on a faster selling pace than the Playstation 4.

Cactuar · Oct 30, 2019

PlayStation 2 doing what it does best, being No. 1.

Mr_F_Snowman · Oct 30, 2019

Pancracio17 said:
Sony is the only consistently good hardware maker lmao. Like really, its actually kinda impressive that they havent fucked it up once yet, and im pretty sure they wont with the PS5 too.

They aint that abysmal in a vacuum. Theyre that bad cause MS was coming off the 360 and just completely botched it. Also depends on the game (repeat players on "dead games" like TF1 are common).

I mean it depends on what you mean by "fucked up" but the VITA is a Wii U level failure in pretty much every way. No support from their own studios, awful sales etc

Rob2K19 · Oct 30, 2019

Dat RLoD effect.

PS2 goating per usual. PS1 still above PS4 is an eye catcher.

Welfare · Oct 30, 2019

hikarutilmitt said:
I'm not seeing how it doesn't matter. It may have been in the several hundred thousand but a class action about a very serious issue that made headlines everywhere isn't a non-factor. The software ratio would actually be a bit inverted from expectations, if anything, because if a hypothetical sell-through of software versus systems were, say, 10:1 (which is only this low for simplicity) then the 360 could have potentially averaged to 8.5-9.5 with them all, possibly lower. It was that widespread. If you knew enough people at repair shops and game store and some sales positions and how often a RROD story came through you'd laugh. Before the major cooling system revamps happened, it was literally a matter of when, not if, as they failed after a fairly specific number of hours of sustained play.

Hell, a warranty survey showing a failure rate of 23.9% is not insignificant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

You might as well factor out all possible revisions as hardware sales then. PS4 Pro and Xbox One X have high amounts of double dipping.

And like I said, the 360 already had insane software sales for the install base. Trying to say that the actual base was non insignificantly lower is pushing the Tie Ratio up to a point of near ludicrous numbers.

The amount of consoles sold because of RROD at this point mean nothing.

Pancracio17 · Oct 30, 2019

Mr_F_Snowman said:
I mean it depends on what you mean by "fucked up" but the VITA is a Wii U level failure in pretty much every way. No support from their own studios, awful sales etc

...I completely forgot about their PSP line. Youre right, they fucked that one up completely. But hey, at least the home consoles are fine!

A Black Falcon · Oct 30, 2019

I presume this "all-time" listing is actually just mid '90s to the present? Otherwise I would think the NES would be on the list, I'm sure it sold better in the US than some of the systems on that list... sure it's hard to compare directly from the public numbers, Nintendo's "Americas" region is not US-only, but still.

On that note, it's interesting that the Xbox One beats out the N64. All I can find for the X1 is 41 million worldwide, versus 20.63 million N64s in the Americas region. So sure, that checks out, X1 is probably majority US...

Mr_F_Snowman · Oct 30, 2019

Pancracio17 said:
...I completely forgot about their PSP line. Youre right, they fucked that one up completely. But hey, at least the home consoles are fine!

Nothing wrong with the hardware though it was well designed

LittleAlchemist · Oct 30, 2019

Mr_F_Snowman said:
Nothing wrong with the hardware though it was well designed

Wasn't the disc drive for the PSP a pretty huge fuck up? I don't really know much about portable systems so I could be wrong but that seems to be a huge issue with the PSP.

Also PS-Vita having exclusive proprietary SD cards was a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fuck up. They costed like half the price of the console.

ElephantShell · Oct 30, 2019

Literally everyone I knew in highschool who was remotely interested in games had a 360. A couple kids with rich parents had PS3s at that time.

Rikimaru · Oct 30, 2019

LittleAlchemist said:
Wasn't the disc drive for the PSP a pretty huge fuck up? I don't really know much about portable systems so I could be wrong but that seems to be a huge issue with the PSP.

What could be an alternative to UMD? Nothing.

hikarutilmitt · Oct 30, 2019

Welfare said:
You might as well factor out all possible revisions as hardware sales then. PS4 Pro and Xbox One X have high amounts of double dipping.

And like I said, the 360 already had insane software sales for the install base. Trying to say that the actual base was non insignificantly lower is pushing the Tie Ratio up to a point of near ludicrous numbers.

The amount of consoles sold because of RROD at this point mean nothing.

Revision are easy enough to split out. The same exact model being rebought multiple times cannot.

And are we really just ignoring failure rate numbers to handwave them not having an impact? Just because it's a dumb thing to rebuy a busted console multiple times doesn't mean it didn't happen. We all know the general consumer doesn't typically make the smartest move. I'm also not saying it would make a significant change in the number being posted in the OP, just that I've always wondered how much of an impact on sales it actually had. We just don't know and to say it didn't would be silly, IMO.

Mr_F_Snowman · Oct 30, 2019

LittleAlchemist said:
Wasn't the disc drive for the PSP a pretty huge fuck up? I don't really know much about portable systems so I could be wrong but that seems to be a huge issue with the PSP.

Also PS-Vita having exclusive proprietary SD cards was a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fuck up. They costed like half the price of the console.

True with the VITA but PSP was fine, very successful albeit in the shadow of the DS

Pancracio17 · Oct 30, 2019

Mr_F_Snowman said:
Nothing wrong with the hardware though it was well designed

Ehh, the Vita did have that one critical design flaw with the memory cards, even though it was completely on purpose. Other than that, yeah, they were both well designed and had a decent amount of power for your buck. Shame the PSP line got dropped.

KillerMan91 · Oct 30, 2019

LittleAlchemist said:
Wasn't the disc drive for the PSP a pretty huge fuck up? I don't really know much about portable systems so I could be wrong but that seems to be a huge issue with the PSP.

Also PS-Vita having exclusive proprietary SD cards was a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fuck up. They costed like half the price of the console.

UMD was only option if you wanted PS2 level games on the go in late 2004. Big memory cards costed a fortune. For example Biggest DS game card at launch was like 128MB (and almost no publisher used those because they costed more than smaller cards). UMDs could hold 1.8 GB of data.

Rikimaru said:
What could be an alternative to UMD? Nothing.

Yep. people continue to shit on UMD and while it had big problems it was only option back then.

legend166 · Oct 30, 2019

Proven said:
It had halo 3 which was the most popular game in the world for a good time and call of duty mixed with ps3 having bad online at a time when online shooters were really taking off and there you go

Nope. It had Kinect.

360 sold well up until 2010, but then sales exploded with the release of the Kinect.

legend166 · Oct 30, 2019

Welfare said:
This'll be the final ranking once both stop selling, sans Switch and next gen obviously

1. PS2
2. Xbox 360
3. Wii
4. PS4
5. Xbox One
6. PS1
7. PS3

Xbox 360 71 months in is November 2005 - September 2011: ~28.9M

Wii 71 months in is November 2006 - September 2012: ~39.8M

So, uh, what's the deal with the list from NPD? It's putting 360 above the Wii after 71 months which isn't the case to the tune of 11 million units.

Tetrinski · Oct 30, 2019

For how much shit the Xbox One sales get, it outsells every Nintendo console with only one exception. That's pretty crazy.

Also, Sony could brand a toaster PlayStation and sell 50 million.

Bosch · Oct 30, 2019

I had to buy 3 Xbox360... and I think many people did that. Same for PS2.

Welfare · Oct 30, 2019

legend166 said:
So, uh, what's the deal with the list from NPD? It's putting 360 above the Wii after 71 months which isn't the case to the tune of 11 million units.

PS4 and XB1 have been on the market for 71 months. It's just a LTD chart I think.

Pokémon · Oct 30, 2019

Tetrinski said:
Also, Sony could brand a toaster PlayStation and sell 50 million.

Eh I think early PS3 days are proof that they can't just do whatever they want. PS3 could have been (and even was in the first few years) a disaster if they hadn't course corrected it.

BreakerofChains · Oct 30, 2019

Tetrinski said:
For how much shit the Xbox One sales get, it outsells every Nintendo console with only one exception. That's pretty crazy.

Also, Sony could brand a toaster PlayStation and sell 50 million.

Yes Xbox is bigger in the US than anywhere else..world wide though this is not true I don't think, although i would need to look up the numbers. The switch will blow past the Xone as well.

pswii60 · Oct 30, 2019

Welfare said:
This'll be the final ranking once both stop selling, sans Switch and next gen obviously

1. PS2
2. Xbox 360
3. Wii
4. PS4
5. Xbox One
6. PS1
7. PS3

Xbox 360 71 months in is November 2005 - September 2011: ~28.9M

Wii 71 months in is November 2006 - September 2012: ~39.8M

So why is Wii not in second place in Piscatella's chart if it's 71 months after launch for each platform? Or if it isn't then what is the 71 months all about? I'm proper confused now lol

Knight613 · Oct 30, 2019

The Switch hasn't been out for 71 months yet but it'll no doubt be above the Xbox One.

christocolus · Oct 30, 2019

Wow. MS did really good with the 360. I hope they do better with Scarlet.

Border · Oct 30, 2019

Wow, that is crazy to think that Playstation1 is ahead of the PS4.

I guess it hurts that modern-era consoles never really get to that magic $99 pricepoint that really pushes them to a new audience.

Tetrinski · Oct 30, 2019

pld said:
Eh I think early PS3 days are proof that they can't just do whatever they want. PS3 could have been (and even was in the first few years) a disaster if they hadn't course corrected it.

The thing is, PS3 did pretty well in that period considering its disastrous launch and lacking line up for a couple years. A different brand (Nintendo, Sega, Xbox) would have suffered much more, just look at things like Saturn, Wii U, Cube, Xbox One... They all suffered much more without half the mess the first couple years of PS3 were

Welfare · Oct 30, 2019

hikarutilmitt said:
Revision are easy enough to split out. The same exact model being rebought multiple times cannot.

And are we really just ignoring failure rate numbers to handwave them not having an impact? Just because it's a dumb thing to rebuy a busted console multiple times doesn't mean it didn't happen. We all know the general consumer doesn't typically make the smartest move. I'm also not saying it would make a significant change in the number being posted in the OP, just that I've always wondered how much of an impact on sales it actually had. We just don't know and to say it didn't would be silly, IMO.

Hardware sales for the 360 around the time of RROD also don't show any noticeable impacts that could be caused by it. It followed typical seasonal trends and you couldn't point anywhere to say "RROD" without coming off as a warrior.

If RROD actually had an impact with talking about, 2006-2008 sales would have been very erratic with few explanations available.

jayspeed · Oct 30, 2019

360 beat Wii because Wii sales fell off a cliff drastically and 360 sales exploded drastically. The Xbox 360 era in the US was not great times for Sony. They were getting smacked in NPD every month by Microsoft and Nintendo. It was so bad we stopped getting Sony NPD numbers during this time. Sony really fucked up the PS3 launch and it haunted them all gen in the US/UK. Just like MS fucked up the XB1 launch and it haunted them all gen worldwide. Shows how important it is to get off to a good start and have good messaging about your product.

Murdock · Oct 30, 2019

PortisheadBiscuit said:
PS2 was a mega beast

PS3 with all its struggles in the US still above XB1

Xbox one had way more struggles then ps3. And ps3 has been out for way longer. It's kind of pathetic that ps3 is only one spot above xbox one

rokkerkory · Oct 30, 2019

Thanks Matrick

what a fall from grace was the beginning of the XBO

Gordon's Tulpa · Oct 30, 2019

Murdock said:
Xbox one had way more struggles then ps3. And ps3 has been out for way longer. It's kind of pathetic that ps3 is only one spot above xbox one

Depends on the gap. Anyway, why 71 months in?

NPD analyst Mat Piscatella “US Hardware install base 71 months in 1) Wii 2) PS2 3) PS4 4) Xbox 360 5) Xbox One 6) PS1 7) PS3 (Updated)

Alt account

▲ Legend ▲

Alt Account

Prophet of Truth - You’re my Numberwall

▲ Legend ▲

10,000,000

▲ Legend ▲

Prophet of Truth - You’re my Numberwall

Alt-Account

Prophet of Truth - You’re my Numberwall