| AirRaid 2006-08-18, 11:35 pm |
| Hirai: PS3 will keep--or surpass--PS2's market share
Sony Computer Entertainment president claims his company's console will
win next-gen struggle.
By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot
Posted Aug 18, 2006 1:07 pm PT
This week, yet another game-industry analyst issued yet another report
predicting yet another winner in the next-gen console race. However,
unlike a July note which warned Sony's "techno-elite" strategy could be
its downfall, this week's report from the Yankee Group forecast the
PlayStation 3 as emerging victorious from the fracas to succeed the
current crop of game platforms.
"By the time third-generation consoles reach market maturity in 2011,
the PlayStation 3 will once again be the market leader," said Yankee
Group in its report. The Boston-based industry-research firm went on to
predict that over the next five years, Sony would sell 30 million PS3s
in North America, attaining a 44 percent market share.
However, with the PlayStation 2, Sony currently enjoys around a 60
percent market share. The Yankee Group's prediction had Microsoft
selling 27 million Xbox 360s to increase its slice of the gaming pie to
40 percent--meaning Sony would cede roughly 16 percent of its North
American customers to its archrival. (The report has Nintendo retaining
its current approximate 16 percent market share, selling just 11
million Wiis over five years.)
The Yankee Group report generated a surge of interest and sparked
numerous verbal skirmishes between console enthusiasts. But how did
Sony feel about it? Was the company happy to receive a reprieve from
the ongoing consumer backlash about the PS3's dual $499 and $599
pricing? Or was it concerned about the fundamental market shift the
report augured?
To get some answers, GameSpot spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment
American President Kaz Hirai about the Yankee Group report and his
company's ongoing preparations for the PS3's November launches in
Japan, North America, and Europe. The executive also addressed the
controversy surrounding Sony's first handheld, the PSP: Will there be a
price drop? Will there be a redesign? And is the PSP's UMD format going
the way of Betamax and MiniDisc? And what about those rumors fingering
Sony as one of the architects of the drastic downsizing of the
Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)? GameSpot put those questions--and
others--to Hirai earlier this week.
GameSpot: Why do you think the Yankee Group report has the PS3 coming
will out on top?
Kaz Hirai: Different people have different opinions, and at this point
in time they're all forecasts. And people make forecasts based on the
information they have at hand--their experience with what the companies
in this space have done in the past, et cetera. And I think that as far
as the Yankee Group goes, they've looked at the information they had at
hand. It's generally a very positive report, but you can tell they've
done a lot of their homework because there are some things that we need
to work on. We've had those ups and downs as far as manufacturing is
concerned on the console, for example, and that's being properly
addressed. So I think they looked at all the information they have at
hand--good, bad or indifferent--and came to this conclusion. And I
obviously think that they did a great job on this report.
GS: Now according to their report, by 2011, when the next-gen console
market matures, the PS3 will have a 44 percent market share. Do you
think that's a fair prediction?
KH: 2011 is, what, five years from now? So I really can't say one way
or the other whether that percentage is the right percentage. My plan
basically is to make sure that we keep at least as much market share as
we have had with the PS1 and the PS2. We don't plan on ceding any of
the market share to our competitors, especially after the cycle has
gone deep.
GS: Right. But Sony has like something like 60 percent market share
now, and they have Microsoft gaining over 15 percent of that.
KH: Well, the numbers change depending on how you slice and dice the
data. What I'm saying is, given any metric they use to chart sales
between 2006 and 2011, or calendar year to date of 2001, whatever you
do, when we look back, I'd like to think that our market share will be
as good--if not better--than what we've accomplished with the PS2 in
the same kind of timeframe since launch.
GS: Speaking of dates, its three months to the day from now that you
guys are going to launch.
KH: Correct. Yes.
GS: How are things looking there?
KH: Everything's pretty much on track. I just came back from Las Vegas
where we we're still actually having our internal sales and
merchandisers gather for basically four or five days of intense
meetings. Everything from retail strategy to talking about the
interactives, and how you can reboot it if your power goes out, so
everything from nuts to bolts all the way up to the retail strategy. So
we're internally really getting geared up to go to market with this
beautiful console in three months' time, and at this point in time all
signs are good to go.
GS: The 360 was plagued by significant shortages at launch. What steps
are you taking to make sure the PS3 doesn't meet the same fate?
KH: Well, I think that you know this is all relative, but you need to
put it in context. I think that we've always talked about shipping 2
million units worldwide within the calendar year. Since we're going
with three territories, we haven't really come up with an allocation
just yet. But even if you do the simple math you're talking about less
than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory between launch
and the end of the year. So even if there was some fluctuation--you
give Japan more, you give the US more, what have you--you're going to
end up with some shortages. So I think that if we've done our jobs
right and if we've been able to really have the consumers become
interested in this product, then, unfortunately, I think it's going to
be very much of a challenge to be able to meet every single unit demand
that's out there in the market. That's just a logistical impossibility.
Unless we suddenly say, "Well we want to wait until June of next year
to launch because we want to stockpile product," I don't think that's
the approach we want to take.
GS: So is the PS3 already being manufactured?
KH: We haven't started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were
actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the
[production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing
as we speak to get the manufacturing going. We've not announced and we
haven't set really a specific date to say, "As of this day we're going
to start manufacturing."
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the rest of it here:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/615604...ws&subj=6156046
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