Three different sets of sales figures were published today, giving a variety of indications for the next gen and hand held systems.
The first of these was the news that the DS has now sold more then 7 Million DS and DS Lite systems in Europe. Added to the American and Japanese sales figures, this means that the DS now has an estimated player base of 27 Million worldwide. That’s a hell of a lot of people playing Mario Kart over Connect 24.
[Source: Gamasutra]
On the PlayStation front, there are two pieces of news. The first comes from Bloomburg, the noted financial news service. According to their report, Sony missed it’s launch target of 400,000 systems in the US. It is now estimated by analysts that Sony will not be able to ship 400,000 systems by the end of 2006.
Conversly, the Wii has sold a vast number of units since launch and is performing ‘phenomenally’.
Given that that this is based on analyst reports, the estimates contained within it are questionable. Analysts are just people paid to make intelligent guesses after all.
The second and final piece of news comes from the US electronics store, GameStop, via IGN, and is also bad news regarding the PlayStation 3.
Apparently, the attach rate, that is the number of games purchased with a new console, has been very low. Ideally, publishers want the attach rate at launch to be quite high, which gets them a lot of money quickly and indicates a good return on their investment. Ideally it will then plateau out.
In the case of the PS3, the attach rate has only been 1.5, meaning that many people have not been buying a game at all. This is probably something to do with the number of PS3s appearing on eBay. As the IGN article says, the attach rate should increase once the eBay selling spree has halted and the real gamers have their hands on the PS3. It’s a shame that so many people have bought the PS3 simply to resell it when so few people managed to get one.
Update: The Xbox 360 Fanboy has an interesting article about the attach rate and the Xbox 360. Apparently, the 360’s high attach rate (5 games per console) is indicative that the 360 only appeals to hardcore gamers. I’m willing to call wait and see on that one.
