US game blog, Kotaku, has compared the opening four month sales figures for a range of recent consoles. The resulting chart shows Wii at the top, then the original Xbox(!). PS3 has the second lowest opening performance after Xbox 360.
It's interesting, but all this chart really says is 'no sane industry watcher draws any conclusions from the opening four months'. Take the Xbox sales figure, massively bloated by the availability of Halo - at first you think 'Blimey, PS3 has been out-performed by Microsoft's original anvil of a machine'. But then, looking at Kotaku's second, more comprehensive chart, you see that Xbox actually did better than PS2 in its first few months - and Xbox categorically didn't go on to shift 115 million units.
To put things into even better perspective, Dreamcast out-launched PS2. I remember seizing on this fact while working on DC-UK magazine. How I laughed as I was clearing my desk barely a year later.
Anyway, interesting viewing and perhaps of some small comfort to Sony as it contemplates the 80% plummet in UK PS3 sales after that record-breaking opening two days.
