As Nintendo continues to make a big splash with its Wii and Microsoft enjoys surpassing the 9-million sold mark with its Xbox 360, news about Sony’s PlayStation 3 has been pretty scarce as of late.
Nomura Securities analyst Eiichi Katayama’s sales prediction report might give some insight into this. The PS3, it appears, just isn’t as popular as its predecessor the PS2, nor as sought after as its competition.
According to a report in Red Herring, Katayama is predicting Sony will not ship nearly as many units as expected and will face bigger than expected operating losses. Nomura Securities has raised the loss estimate to $1.03 billion for the fiscal third quarter of 2008 up from $332 million.
While Sony claims to have fulfilled its promise to have 1 million consoles shipped to North America by the end of 2006, the report points out this was only accomplished by shuffling shipments away from Japan where sales have only now just hit the 470,000 unit point.
None of this bodes well for Sony in regard to stock sales or profits. On the upside, the console’s lack of popularity has made finding it on store shelves a little bit easier. We ran into two in the same store last week, but have yet to see a Wii.
As Sony struggles to make a place for its PS3, it’s my personal guess the console will show a good rebound when better titles make it to the market. Right now, the picking is scarce and I’m fairly certain that’s not enticing gamers to fork over cash to only have one or two games to play.
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