Digital Trends
Sony’s new online service connecting the whole range of its gadgets to downloadable content like movies and games should help build brand loyalty, a top executive said Friday.
Executive Vice President Kazuo Hirai said the service, set for launch next year, highlights an advantage that Sony has over rivals like Samsung Electronics Co. and other manufacturers that don’t produce their own content. Sony’s business empire spans gaming, electronics, movies and music.
The PlayStation 3 has been on the market for three years—and for most of that time, the console has been pulling up the rear amongst so-called next-generation game console sales, regularly trounced by the Xbox 360 and (of course) the Nintendo Wii—and for a while even struggling to stay ahead of the decade-old PlayStation 2. But the introduction of the PS3 Slim coupled with substantial price cuts seem to have translated into sales momentum for the PS3—in fact, Sony claims PS3 sales this October were 70 percent higher than sales in October 2008.
Hot on the heels of Microsoft rolling out support for Facebook and Twitter for the Xbox Live Gold subscribers, Sony has released firmware version 3.10 for the PlayStation 3 gaming console—and guess what? The update adds Facebook support.
Media metrics firm NPD has released its figures for October sales of video games and video game systems in the United States, and the news was again good for Sony. During the month, the PlayStation 3 continued to outsell Microsoft’s Xbox 360, moving 321,000 units during the month compared to 250,000 units for the Xbox 360. The Nintendo Wii still remains the console to beat—selling some 507,000 units during the month—but the Wii looks to have peaked: compared to October of 2008, saled of the Nintendo Wii are down 37 percent.
Sony seems to be reaping the benefits of it’s long-put-off price cuts to its PlayStation 3 gaming console: according to media analysis firm NPD, the PlayStation 3 was the top-selling gaming console in the United States during the month of September, moving 491,800 units during the month. The victory marks the first time the PlayStation 3 has topped the U.S. console sales charts since the system was introduced almost three years ago.
The Nintendo Wii dropped to second place, with 462,800 units in sales, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 finished in third place with 352,600 unit sales.
Back in August, Sony took the wraps off a new PS3 Slim, a sleeker version of its gaming console with a slimmed-down price designed to better compete with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii game consoles for the upcoming holiday season. But now Sony is again looking to appeal to the high end of the digital entertainment marketplace, announcing the at a 250 GB version of the PlayStation 3 console will go on sale in the United States on November 3 for $349.99. The 250 GB console uses the same form factor as the PS3 Slim, just packs more storage for folks who plan to spend a lot of quality time (and bandwidth) downloading movies, games, images, and other content from the PlayStation Network.
It’s been almost three years since Nintendo began proving conclusively that a motion-sensitive controller can be a hit in the video gaming world, and now Sony has announced it plans to get in on the act, saying it plans to ship a new motion controller for its PlayStation 3 video game system. However, folks who were planning on maybe buying (or receiving) a stocking-stuffer for the holiday season are out of luck: the new controller won’t be available until “spring 2010,” which in marketing-speak means sometime before mid-June.
Sony Corp. is on cloud nine right now with it’s high selling, highly demanded PS3 Slim, and come this winter things are looking even better for the Tokyo-based company. Japan’s December 17 release of Final Fantasy XIII is expected to give a giant boost to Sony’s PlayStation 3 sales. President of Famiitsu publisher Enterbrain, Hirokazu Hamamura, stated yesterday to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club for Japan that he predicts the PS3 will sell around half a million units over the year end sales period.
Has Sony finally found a sweet spot for its PlayStation 3 gaming console? Maybe so—at least in Europe—according to new sales figures from Chart-Track. According to the market analysis firm, the newly introduced-and-repriced PS3 Slim has seen a massive jump in sales in its first week of availability in the United Kingdom, seeing almost a 1000 percent jump in sales over the previous week. The numbers have the PS3 Slim outselling the Wii and the Xbox 360 by three-to-one during the week…and may indicate Sony is on to something with its new PS3 price tag.
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