November Sales: Is the PS3 Price Cut Enough?

By Paul Munn | December 14, 2007

Last month Bill Harris posted on Dubious Quality about historical sales trends for the holidays and with the release of the NPD numbers for November — the PS3’s first full month the USD 399 model available — Bill has returned to the scene to try and divine where the PS3 will be after the holiday bump.

While sales are up, Bill doesn’t think they’re up enough compared to the Xbox 360’s numbers. While I’m not in any way shape or form in marketing or sales, I don’t think his numbers are far away from what I was expecting to see, from my comments in our early November podcast, anyway.

So, at the end of the rabbit hole, I think it’s reasonable to estimate January sales for the PS3 at 186,000 units, plus or minus 15%.

And for Sony, that’s a problem. Yes, 186,000 units a month is a huge boost for them, but that will leave them a distant third in the U.S. market. The 360 outsold the PS3 by 304,000 units in November–that’s crushing. And that’s with a price cut for the PS3 and all the initial hoopla and promotion.

I for one wasn’t expecting the PS3 to outsell the 360 in early 2008, but I was thinking out loud in one of our podcasts just after the sales numbers came out that something to the tune of 200,000 to 250,000 units a month would be a nice place to be. If one optimistically tacks on the 15% to the 186k estimate you’re in that range.

Source: Dubious Quality.