Not good news for Sony. I would have thought that with all of the violence surrounding PS3 sales, that they would have been top-dog. However, in the US in November, Wii sales more than doubled those of the PlayStation 3.
Nintendo sold 476,140 Wii consoles in the U.S. in November and Sony only scrounged up a disappointing 196,580 sales of the PS3.
It turns out that the both are still behind the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. That thing has been out for a year, so I also would not have thought that it’s sales would have been that high. In November in the US, Microsoft sold 511,300 Xbox 360 consoles.
In all fairness, the Wii and the PS3 were not available for sale until halfway through the month, so the numbers may be a little misleading when compared to the Xbox 360 numbers.
Sony needed a big hit with the PS3, but I do not think that they have it yet. The new PS3 will not play some of the older PS2 games. They have had manufacturing problems which have reduced the number of PlayStation 3 systems available for U.S. and Japan launches, and these problems prompted Sony to postpone next year’s European debut of the console (sorry mates ;)).
Nintendo, on the other hand, seems to be ready. The Wii consoles went very quickly when it went on sale in Europe. That is more bad news for Sony, I think. Although, maybe this will give them some time to develop some PS3 Self-defense classes which potential European buyers can take.