GAME Reveal UK Console Numbers
The console war in the UK is not going Sony's way.Published 04/07/2009 at 18:00 by Watchful
Lunchtime Discussion: Console Sellers [50]
GW: Is Console Gaming Turning Elitist? [29]
GW: Consoles Vs PC [47]
Whilst we are used to seeing the hardware sales figures for the US and Japan on a regular basis, via NPD Group and Media Create respectively, letting us know how well the console wars are progressing in those far-flung territories, UK numbers are harder to come by. UK hardware sales are monitored by GfK ChartTrack and to get them you need to be a subscriber. The TSA piggy bank fiercely guards the few pennies it contains so, unable to subscribe, we rely on other subscribing organisations to publish the numbers for us.
One reliably bi-annual source of those numbers is GAME Group PLC, the UK’s biggest video game retailer, who operate both the GAME and Gamestation chains of stores. This week they held their Annual General Meeting and presented their trading update to the 27th June. That trading update contains the figures for the current UK installed base of consoles as well as reproducing the figures from GAME’s last three updates. So how is the console war playing out in the UK? It looks like this:
Running down the latest set of numbers for the consoles we have the Nintendo DS way out in front with 9.1m sold, followed by the Wii with 5.4m, Xbox 360 with 3.9m, PSP with 3.3m, PS3 with 2.2m and finally the DSi with just 0.3m sold to date. As, arguably, the DSi is just another flavour of DS that leaves Sony’s two consoles trailing.
Things look even worse if we calculate the last year’s sales using the sets of numbers from both this year’s and last year’s AGMs, those dated 28/06/08 and 27/06/09. They show that the DS has sold 2.3m in the last 12 months, the Wii 2.3m, the 360 1.7m, the PS3 0.9m and the PSP just 0.5m.
So the 360 has been outselling the PS3 by almost two to one and the PS3 has been doing the same to the PSP. This shows two things. In its first eighteen months on sale the 360 sold 2.2m and it has come not far short of matching that in the last twelve. That shows you how successful last August’s price cut was. The second point is just how badly the PSP has sold in the past year. With the current £130, or less, PSP doing that badly, no wonder retailers and consumers are expressing some doubt about the forthcoming PSPgo, which is currently anticipated to retail for around £230.
The smart money is on a price cut for the PS3 no later than October, possibly announced as soon as August at Gamescom in Cologne. Given the weakness of the British pound how much of any price cut we will see is up for debate. The speculated $100 price cut may translate to £50 if we are lucky which would bring the PS3’s UK list price down to just £249 or just £20 more than a PSPgo.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
arodmell | 04/07/2009 18:04
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Very interesting.
Just goes to show how varied the gaming industry is these days
LiquescentShadow | 04/07/2009 18:05
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If both GAME and Gamestation are run by the same people, why is Gamestation a much better store with completely different prices?
Watchful | 04/07/2009 18:07
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I guess GAME haven’t yet completed ‘integrating’ it.
deadwelsh | 04/07/2009 18:12
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Game bought Gamestation about 3 years back, they haven’t made it very public though. I guess the 2 tier model that joe public may not know about is a great way to maximise your sales. Most people with consoles i know will go to noth to see who gives the best deals. Keeping a veil of secrecy means they are more likely to gain business from everyone. Also Gamestation relies mainly on 2nd hand market, where as GAME focuses on forst hand sales
cc_star | 04/07/2009 18:18
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Integration is now happening at a boardroom level, this will filter down to an operational level before too much longer, and then it’s only a matter of time before we see the same cultures, maybe training and who knows maybe even the same branding.
LiquescentShadow | 04/07/2009 18:28
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It will be a shame, as I despise GAME but love Gamestation.
ChoZanWan | 04/07/2009 20:51
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As far as I know, they want to keep them two separate entities, one for families (GAME) and one for the more hardcare gamer (GS). They have merged the despatch centre though.
CaptainMurdo | 04/07/2009 18:17
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Is that the DSi hidden in the bottom right corner? I thought they had sold more than that.
Watchful | 04/07/2009 18:20
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I was surprised it hadn’t managed more than 0.3m sales. I guess we Brits are more than happy with our DS Lites.
DarthSharkey | 04/07/2009 20:35
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I was surprised at that to, but it hasn’t been out that long. I like my DS Lite better because I can play guitar hero on it.
cc_star | 04/07/2009 18:22
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The typical high street consumer (people’s mums and grandparents) aren’t going to be ideally suited to Sony’s demographic at this stage in the PS3’s lifecycle.
I expect another year to go by (summer of 2010) when maybe a pricecut (this autumn) a new SKU (this autumn?) has bedded in.
The PS3 will then be a high street friendly price and it is only then that the mass market will make a move towards GAME stores to buy a PS3
I believe I have spoken in fact there, and although it’s not an ideal situation now it’s probably the truth.
BioEye | 04/07/2009 18:28
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Surprising that sales don’t drop. Especially for the Wii. How many more people left are there to actually buy these things?
Watchful | 04/07/2009 18:41
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Remember these are cumulative figures. So you won’t see a drop on the graph.
I didn’t go into the figures for the last four months in the article because it was too depressing. From end of Jan to the end of Jun the 360 (0.6m) has outsold the Wii, PS3 and DSi by 2:1 (0.3m each) and the PSP and DS by 6:1 (0.1m each).
BioEye | 04/07/2009 19:55
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Aah, cumulative.
Interesting that the PSP was outselling the 360 then.
lemming64 | 04/07/2009 18:42
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funnily enough a friend of mine just said to me yesterday she was going to buy one soon. Seriously, I nearly wept.
coolgr33k | 04/07/2009 21:33
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theres always someone, but the reason my friends doesnt brake is becuase the never use it. but how can it brake anyway! 1 will last as long as a ps2 i say, or longer.
deadwelsh | 04/07/2009 18:36
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Although the Wii has a massive install base, does anyone actually buy games for it?? Yes Wii fit has helped sell more units, but of all the people I know that own a Wii, it is now nothing more than nice paper weight with flashing blue lights!
Watchful | 04/07/2009 18:49
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It’ll vary. I’ve got twice as many Wii games (12) as I have 360 games (6). And 30 Blu-ray PS3 games plus a similar number of PSN titles.
Given the Wii’s more casual market it will have a lower ‘attach rate’, that’s only to be expected. Nintendo won’t be that worried though. The Wii hardware was profitable at launch and they’ve reduced cost while maintaining price since.
djhsecondnature | 04/07/2009 18:53
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How many TSAians bought their PS3 at GAME? I got mine from Zavvi.
Watchful | 04/07/2009 19:05
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Mine’s from GAME. Note those figures are all UK sales not just from GAME if that’s what you’re getting at.
Timesh1993 | 04/07/2009 19:31
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I got mine from Game.
colossalblue | 04/07/2009 19:39
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Mine came from Game but then so did my Wii and my 360. I like having a place I can walk into and complain if it stops working and Game were just as cheap as anywhere else at the time. Plus they were giving loads of reward points on each of the consoles.
It would be really interesting if we were able to know how many of those 360’s sold in Game were replacements for broken units? When I walked in to Game and told the guy exactly which 360 I wanted he said that I knew my stuff and asked me if I was buying it to replace one that broke. I wasn’t quick enough to play dumb with him but after a while of chatting he admitted that they sell 360s almost exclusively to people 18-25 who are replacing a broken one or 10-15 yr olds with their clueless mothers.
Simply put, I don’t think Sony have got their marketing or their pricing right but they /have/ got their product right. The pricing will improve when they cut the price but the marketing may never reach the highs of the late 90’s “Double Life” campaign.
Mick939 | 04/07/2009 20:04
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I was actually about to bring that up, especially in the past couple month’s i’ve sold many replacement consoles (normally arcades but alot of 60’s for the extra memory for some people) maybe thats there big plan outsell everything by making them fail after a while
saying that i also have the same problem with the ds lite’s though some do then convert to the dsi.
Hell its possible now continious play has now stopped that perhaps the ps3 will get an increase in sales (though i would doubt as much as the 360 gets from the same errrr ‘market’?
Cjdamon042 | 04/07/2009 22:52
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Got mine from Gamestation for £349.99 in October 2007 with Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Fantastic 4 BD and Ghost Rider BD (haven’t watched Ghost Rider yet and don’t intend to haha). It was around the time they brought down the price slightly to phase out the BC 60GB SKU.
BioEye | 04/07/2009 19:53
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Tesco… *scared face*
cc_star | 04/07/2009 20:28
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Oi!
Cort | 04/07/2009 23:01
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Play.com. 60GB BC FTW.
Colinbarr66 | 05/07/2009 01:14
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Got my 80gb from HMV
X_Yoshy_X | 05/07/2009 11:23
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Got my 60gb from Blockbuster all most 2 years ago
Beelzie14 | 05/07/2009 19:05
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Game 60GB Oct 2007
Snebjnr | 05/07/2009 21:18
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I bought mine from play.com
gazo69 | 04/07/2009 19:21
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It baffles me why so many people shop at GAME, the prices are extortionate!
Mick939 | 04/07/2009 20:06
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That they damn well are, i also notice that game station post ‘best in town boards’ outside there shop when there normally the same as HMV and more expensive than toys’r'us.
rht992 | 05/07/2009 10:56
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because of reward points and not being arsed to look for a better deal
Beelzie14 | 05/07/2009 19:06
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People shop at Toys ‘r Us for games? I thought that was hella expensive!
Timesh1993 | 04/07/2009 19:32
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Sony can take one positive out of this, the fact that they’re beating the DSi
coolgr33k | 04/07/2009 21:29
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lol i dont think there bothered much about the dsi, but i didnt think it would sell much with adding a little camera and memory stick, you buy the ds for the touch screen, and i doubt little kids mainly wll buy another for a camera.
Mick939 | 04/07/2009 20:10
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perhaps this can be used again to possibly secure a price drop, but then again the console has managed to secure blu rays hold AND makes a profit which as from what i read a while ago the 360 dosn’t seem to so from there point of view they don’t need a price drop, i don’t think sony really take a ‘console war’ seriously and to be honest neither have i. I’m always happy in the knowledge that i know from first hand experience that ps3’s the best and that i never have constant issues with it like my old 360.
tyrant161 | 04/07/2009 20:11
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Why has the 360 sold so many?????
Answer….
The red ring of death.
Well it’s certainly helped the numbers, i myself have had 7 of them go RROD on me, and loads of my friends have had the same problem too…it was one of the reasons that i decided to move to PS3.
I know that PS3 can suffer bluray problems or even the yellow light of death, but the failure rate is much smaller than the xbox360’s.
Roynaldo | 04/07/2009 22:58
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Your comment has made me think, are these actual cash in hand sales or amount of units gone through their doors, because with the amount of RRODs going on(which are under warranty) then surely they will have plenty more “replacement” xboxs go through which will be funded for by microsft on the insurance side of things, which in the end could well distort figures quite a bit.
Hmmmmmm…
YOURMUMANDME | 04/07/2009 20:23
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Hmmm , notice the gap getting ever so slightly larger between the 360 and the Ps3 ? Which actually contradicts previous figures released , so what’s the beef ?
cc_star | 04/07/2009 20:31
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When I worked at GAME
I sold a minimum of 1 per day to someone who had sent their RROD to MS to be fixed
All they were doing was eBaying the repaired one when it came back
Apparently it’s the ‘done’ thing to do
ChoZanWan | 04/07/2009 20:51
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As a slight hijack, for those of you that won’t shop at GAME, care to say why?
coolgr33k | 04/07/2009 21:27
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well i mite have shopped at game if they were cheaper, but they do have some special offers. i buy around and not jjst from 1 place.
fid | 08/07/2009 10:10
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price!
gibbodude | 04/07/2009 21:15
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Yes this looks bad but how many people but PS3 at Game when you get them much cheaper in chips, HMV