PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Lifetimes Sales in 14 European Countries

[Bruno MB]

This capture is taken from a GfK Entertainment report that covers the sales of the first half of 2015 in Europe.
It includes cumulative hardware sales for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as of week 24, 2015, but the most important thing is that also includes what the previous systems had sold. These are practically PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 lifetime sales in these 14 countries since they sold very few units more after that date.

PlayStation 3 - 25,98 million
Xbox 360 - 20,86 million

 

[Zedark]

Oho, very interesting! I had expected PS3 to have a bit more of a lead over XB360 in Europe than 25%, but it looks like XB360 held its own quite well during that generation.

 

[menx64]

wow, Uk was xbox land. The Xbox One lost all gains msft made in that territory.

 

[allan-bh]

Even being outsold by PS3, the 360 had a decent performance in mainland Europe.

The original Xbox seems to have been very centric at markets with english as a language, and unfortunelly it become to be the trend again with Xbox One.

I mean, there's exceptions like Mexico and Brazil, but other than that the markets where Xbox has a good share I believe are US, Canada, UK and Australia.

 

[Adventureracing]

MS missed a trick not focusing on Europe more after their success with the 360. They seemed hell bent on pushing into Japan which was a mistake IMO.

 

[Violette]

MS missed a trick not focusing on Europe more after their success with the 360. They seemed hell bent on pushing into Japan which was a mistake IMO.

At the time, Japanese publishers were kingmakers and the Japanese market had strategic importance.

Many of Microsoft's smart decisions with the first Xbox, such as working with PC developers to get their games on consoles, were done because they were having trouble getting console publishers to support them.

 

[Sadist]

Yeah, that seems about right in regards to Xbox. I’m still perplexed at how badly MS handled the Xbox One in Europe. Still bizarre

 

[fiendcode]

MS missed a trick not focusing on Europe more after their success with the 360. They seemed hell bent on pushing into Japan which was a mistake IMO.

Their Japan push ended a couple years after 360 launch honestly. They did almost nothing to drive One in the region and really only recently have even started courting Japanese content again.

 

[Cocodor]

Thansk for sharing those numbers Bruno!
Put some things in perspective, like how big the drop for Xbox was in Italy, Sweden and Netherlands, despite having an impressive ratio there.

MS missed a trick not focusing on Europe more after their success with the 360. They seemed hell bent on pushing into Japan which was a mistake IMO.

I don't think that was a mistake when the first half of life of the 360 had a fantastic software library diversity thanks to that.
As fiendcode said, it changed after that though.

 

[Xevross]

The number one highlight from this is it displays how much Xbox really dropped the ball last gen, especially at the start. There's another universe where they kept up the momentum and made it a dead heat in gen 8.

 

[Welfare]

The learnings from the Kinect era (2010-2012) was toxic to Xbox. 50% of usage was to entertainment apps, the 360 sold nearly as many sales in those 3 years than the previous 5 combined (38.8M 2005-2009 / 37.1M 2010-2012), and US market share went up in that period.

US 2005-2009: ~18.7M
WW 2005-2009: 38.8M

US Ratio: 48%

US 2010-2012: ~19.3M
WW 2010-2012: 37.1M

US Ratio: 52%

Trying to force Kinect compatibility caused Microsoft to foolishly delay the release of Xbox One in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland. This wasn't a supply reason since XB1 infamously had 900K unsold units after 2013. They could have easily filled launch demand in those 8 countries.

Microsoft needed to have a no Kinect XB1 at launch. Not having that basically pushed tons of 360 owners straight to the PS4.

Microsoft with the Xbox Series is turning things around slowly. It's the fastest selling Xbox ever yet US sales still trail Xbox One by quite a bit. They made sure to launch in 40 countries day 1.

 

[Shadow of the Void]

Thanks! Good stuff.

They didn't by any chance post Wii sales anywhere, did they?

 

[Celine]

At bare minimum* Wii sold more than 23.50M in Europe and DS over 39.00M.

* only handful of european markets (the big ones), and not always with enough up to date data.

 

[MysticGon]

Nvm. Missed that these are only 2 years worth of current gen sales.

 

[Bruno MB]

This is a chart of PlayStation 4 vs Xbox One sales in Europe from 2013 to 2015.

 

[Kenka]

Data compiled over 19 European countries. That is rather significant.
Though, I wonder how big markets such as Greece, Turkey and Romania are. I wish we had data over years for these markets as well.

 

[Bruno MB]

Data compiled over 19 European countries. That is rather significant.
Though, I wonder how big markets such as Greece, Turkey and Romania are. I wish we had data over years for these markets as well.

To have an idea on the size of each market at that time here is a chart that contains overall software sales by revenue during the first half of 2016 in those 19 European markets.

 

[Kenka]

So taken together, UK, FR and DE represent two thirds of the represented market? I don't think I've seen this information anywhere yet. Thanks!

 

[Arynio]

Is Ireland somehow included in the UK data? Otherwise I'm surprised we don't have data for that country.

 

[Brandonleemoss]

Wow perception versus reality this is crazy I honestly thought this whole time the PS3 destroyed the Xbox 360 in Europe but looking at this I'm shocked by how close it really was wow!

 

[Salesman]

Quite a turnover from X360 to X1

 

[Luminoth 4545]

Weird how the UK is a far bigger market than France and Germany for Playstation and Xbox but France and Germany's overall market value is similar because they have a far bigger PC and slightly bigger Nintendo Market.

 

[Welfare]

Weird how the UK is a far bigger market than France and Germany for Playstation and Xbox but France and Germany's overall market value is similar because they have a far bigger PC and slightly bigger Nintendo Market.

Today Germany is actually equal to or greater than UK for PS.

 

[PirateKingGilder]

I'm not sure if anyone has the answer for this, but I figured it'd be worth a shot to ask:

For some reason Norway is an extreme outlier in the chart posted in the OP.

All other countries listed have their PS4 and Xbox One totals far down from their roughly final LTD totals for PS3 and 360 as of the date given.

Norway, on the other hand, has its PS3+360 totals at 90k and 50k (140k total), but its PS4+Xbox One totals at 150k and 30k (180k total), implying that in Norway, and Norway alone, the PS4 sold so quickly that it managed to outsell the entire previous install base of the PS3+360 combined in the span of only about 1.5 years from launch.

Do we know any reason as to why this occurred, or is Norway appearing to be an outlier in the chart just due to incomplete regional data for PS3+360 install base figures for it in comparison to the other countries listed?

 

[Waluigilicious]

I'm not sure if anyone has the answer for this, but I figured it'd be worth a shot to ask:

For some reason Norway is an extreme outlier in the chart posted in the OP.

All other countries listed have their PS4 and Xbox One totals far down from their roughly final LTD totals for PS3 and 360 as of the date given.

Norway, on the other hand, has its PS3+360 totals at 90k and 50k (140k total), but its PS4+Xbox One totals at 150k and 30k (180k total), implying that in Norway, and Norway alone, the PS4 sold so quickly that it managed to outsell the entire previous install base of the PS3+360 combined in the span of only about 1.5 years from launch.

Do we know any reason as to why this occurred, or is Norway appearing to be an outlier in the chart just due to incomplete regional data for PS3+360 install base figures for it in comparison to the other countries listed?

The gen 7 numbers look like an error to me. They are way too low compared to all other countries, where gen 8 fits right in. But who knows.

 

[adriandlte]

Thank you for posting, this is very interesting. Is there any particular reason why the 360 did so well against the PS3 in Italy compared to other European countries?