But
Microsoft has already had a year in the market to cream off
early adopters, so the next few weeks will demonstrate how much
pent-up demand there really is for the Xbox 360, and how many
disappointed PS3 buyers are willing to switch camps.
David Mercer, Principal Analyst, Strategy Analytics
“Sony will sell everything it can make of its new system,” notes
David Mercer, Principal Analyst. “But Microsoft has already had
a year in the market to cream off early adopters, so the next
few weeks will demonstrate how much pent-up demand there really
is for the Xbox 360, and how many disappointed PS3 buyers are
willing to switch camps.”
The report predicts global sales of nearly 9 million
next-generation games consoles during the last quarter of 2006.
The Xbox 360 will remain the leading system through most of 2007
but the PS3 will be catching up by the end of the year and is
still set to become the dominant platform of the next
generation. The report predicts that more than 120 million PS3s
will be sold through 2012, compared to 60 million Xbox 360s and
23 million Nintendo Wiis. North America will account for more
than 50 percent of all console sales over this period.