There’s no way that Sony will make its forecast for 1 million units in the U.S. this calendar year
– NDP Group
Before the PlayStation 3 was released on Nov. 17, Sony had promised the public 400,000 PS3 units on launch day. NDP Group has done some research, and as it turns out, Sony only got out 197,000 units on launch day. This explains all the crazed events that took place the week of the 17th.
As for the competition, Nintendo claims it sold over 600k units in the first eight days of the Wii’s release. This is all in contrast Microsoft, who sold over 500k of its Xbox 360 consoles in the month of November—which was largely due to the release of Gears of War.
Personally, I don’t care if Sony misses its target this year, however, I do care if Sony doesn’t tend to early adopters of the PlayStation 3, which seems to be a real problem right now. None of the reported problems of the console have been fixed since it launched (mine has actually gotten worse with the updates), and Sony hasn’t given us any solutions to any of the problems. With all the bad press, reviews and customer complaints, it’s no surprise the PlayStation 3 has had the worst launch of the next gen consoles.
Sony Only Gets Out 197,000 PS3s [seeking alpha]