Sony to miss PS3 sales target by 27%, Reeves still bullish

Sony Computer Entertainment will miss its sales target of 11 million PlayStation3 units sold in the financial year ending in March, analysts agree. Instead, Sony is expected to sell 8 million, 27 percent below the original mark.

Even Sony executives appear to accept that the original target is no longer within their reach, as Bloomberg reports.

Price cuts and the introduction of a cheaper model helped Sony approach its goal of selling 11 million PlayStation 3s in the year ending March. Still, analysts at Nikko Citigroup Ltd. and Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd. predict the Tokyo-based company will miss the target after being outsold by the Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360.

"It's an industry consensus that PS3 sales will fall short of the target," said Mitsuhiro Osawa, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. (...)

Sony is expected to sell 8 million PlayStation 3s in the year ending March 31, missing its annual target by 27 percent, Daiwa said in a Jan. 18 report. Nintendo will probably sell 19 million Wii machines and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will ship 9.1 million Xbox 360 consoles, according to Daiwa.

"We haven't made any conclusion whether we have to give it up," Hirai said, referring to this fiscal year's 11 million shipment target. "It depends on how aggressively dealers buy our PS3 inventory."

Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said on Oct. 25 that Sony may miss the goal.

Only last September, SCEI president Kaz Hirai believed to be on track to meet the ambitious sales goal.

While Japanese executives are now hesitant as far as the PS3´s performance is concerned, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves has thrown down a fresh gauntlet.

In an interview with UK gaming site MCV, Reeves promises that PS3 sales in his territory are set to overtake Xbox360 figures by summer.

In terms of installed base in some of our major markets, such as France, Spain, Germany, Italy, plus some distributor territories in smaller markets like Switzerland, our current cumulative installed base is now higher than that of Xbox 360.

It has not quite yet reached that in the UK. But the team here expect to overtake installed base of Xbox 360 across PAL territories in late summer. I would say before, but that is when we think we will overtake Xbox 360.

It’s worth mentioning that last week we outsold Xbox 360 in PAL territories by a ratio of 3:1.

EDIT Sony has slashed their sales forecast from 11 to 9,5 million units, Games Industry reports. From October through to December Sony sold 4,9 million PS3 units, Sony also claimed.

PSP sales targets have been raised from 10 to 13 million units, though, and the division has returned to profitability.

Source: Bloomberg, MCV