TJim Ryan, the outgoing boss of Sony’s gaming division who joined Sony several months before the release of the original PlayStation, gave an interview. Official PlayStation Podcast Last week, in honor of his retirement. He talked about his PlayStation 5 as potentially Sony’s “most successful console ever on multiple vectors,” but interestingly, he didn’t specify what those vectors actually were. did not do it. How much time did you spend playing? What will individual players spend? Sales? We’ll have to try a little harder to get past the 160 meter total length of the PlayStation 2, but so far around 55 meters have been sold.
Regarding the total number of PlayStation 2 units, this is actually the first time I’ve heard the number 2024 on this podcast, even though the PS2 was discontinued in 2013. The last official number we had for the PS2 was “over 155 million units.” ” As of March 2012, this figure is still being quoted. Sony’s own website. Ryan claims that 160 million was celebrated as an internal sales milestone, but Sony never actually announced it.Industry Analyst Daniel Ahmad I did the back of the envelope calculations. This confirms the sum, but it begs the question. Why didn’t Sony actually tell anyone how many PS2s they sold?
The gaming industry as a whole is bad at telling someone how much something sold to an actual human being. In the old days, publishers would announce the number of consoles and games they “shipped”, but this was not how many were purchased by customers, but how many were sold to retailers. All publishers are now performing Jim Ryan-esque feats of obfuscation across multiple vectors. Activision is the prime culprit year after year with its ridiculous Call of Duty metrics. That means fastest turnover, highest first week gross, most player time, and most games played on opening weekend.
Xbox hasn’t told us how many consoles it sold for over a decade. I had to look into 2K’s financial reports to find out that the PS5 beat the Xbox Series S/X two to one. Instead, Microsoft is emphasizing user numbers, subscription revenue, and “growth” (though it’s still growing in the Its growth has been somewhat lacking recently, as I pointed out as a justification for the layoffs.
As for Steam and other digital storefronts, you never know. Steam didn’t make it easy to see how much an item sold for.Leave it to a third-party service steam spy Estimate sales by collecting data from user profiles. In some cases, individual developers may publish numbers that cannot be independently verified. Apps and mobile games are similarly mysterious, being tracked by independent companies such as: data.ai (formerly App Annie) charges huge fees for access to detailed data.
In the UK, ChartTrack was reporting accurate sales statistics for all games and consoles. He wasn’t able to do that until around 2008, when downloading games started to become the norm. In the US, NPD Group tracks both physical and digital sales, but relies on the cooperation and self-reporting of game publishers. Currently, Nintendo is one of the three game console manufacturers that publicly, regularly, and accurately. Report your own sales In quarterly financial results.
You might think, “Who cares?” What is his 5m on PS2 between friends? And it’s true that I find this lack of transparency especially annoying because I’m a journalist and I want to know the answer. But because sales are not reported, companies can spin a narrative that doesn’t match reality to please the market and shareholders. They can claim success based on the metrics that best support their story.
That’s at least interesting I would like to know how many games have actually been sold. This is a matter of historical significance and part of the history of the industry. Sales tell us about changing tastes, trends, and tendencies. And as the past year or so in the gaming industry has shown, people’s lives depend on these numbers.
It could be argued that 10 years ago, the gaming industry was in the midst of a transition towards digital sales and revenue, and many developers and publishers simply didn’t have access to accurate numbers and were still producing internal reports. . That seems hard to believe now, especially after Microsoft accidentally leaked large amounts of its own data during a lawsuit with the US Federal Trade Commission last year.
It seems absurd that we don’t know how many people actually buy the most popular (and least popular) video games and consoles in the world…and we don’t know how many PS2 units are sold. I had to wait 12 years.
what to play
Our gaming correspondent Keith Stuart wrote about Downpour a while back. Downpour is a simple game creation software that allows anyone to create games on their mobile phone using images and hyperlinks. This week’s pick is his 5-minute wonder on the platform. proper cup of tea By Terry Cavanagh, who also created the absolutely perfect action game Super Hexagon many years ago. (This fact makes me happy.)
The purpose is simple. Make your own beer. I laughed out loud twice on the train at the many surreal endings. I found this game very amusing, but my partner’s reaction to it was even more amusing. He made tea just once, in his own very special way, and then he retired believing he had won the game.
Available on: just tap this link on your mobile phone (or Click in your browser)
Estimated play time: 5 minutes
Keza MacDonald takes a weekly look back at the world of gaming
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what to read
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As you may know, Nintendo will be shutting down servers for its older consoles, Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, on April 8th. In response, a group of super-skilled Mario players set themselves the seemingly impossible task of completing all of the 80,000 user-generated levels. super mario maker. Julian Benson spoke to them as the clock ticked down on this great story.
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employees of SegaUK studios have suffered recent job losses: Publisher 240 roles reduced He worked his way across Creative Assembly, HARDlight, Sega Europe, and sold Relic Entertainment (of Company of Heroes fame).
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bandai namco has released three games created by students from its workforce training project Free on Steam.One of them is called muddy dog And cast you as a Pomeranian who tries to confuse you as much as possible. (You may remember that Namco’s game design students were responsible for some of the better Katamari Damacy.)
