Sony launched the Playstation 3 with a lot of fan fare. They had good reason to, the Playstation 3 could very well mean the difference between salvation and starvation for the troubled Sony executives. Unforunately well after the launch, it seems that the latter holds true for them. Sony's brand image as well as its profitability are both taking hits, especially after the exploding battery episode and there were high hopes from the Playstation 3 to redeem the company. However close competitor Nintendo has allowed Sony no relief on this front either. Despite being launched by almost 3 weeks after the Playstation, the Nintendo Wii has managed to clock up 1.14 million units in Japan. Comparatively, in the Japanese markets (which are considered as extremely important by console makers) the Playstation 3 managed to just reach the 534,336 mark. This was significant since Sony was positively hopeful of easily making it to the 1 million mark as well.

Of course the Wii enjoys the benefits of being cheaper and despite the negative publicity surrounding the remote control straps, it has only served to increase the interest of the people to the radically new system of control. The Playstation despite having problems over manufacturing (they were unable to ship the required numbers initially) is now finding it tough to make up for lost ground. Mind you that Sony did announce shipping of one million units in USA for the Playstation 3 but these figures only reveal shipping to the retailers and not the actual consumers. Sony also conveniently avoided mention of the fact that they had expected to ship 2 million units combined to the USA and Japan.

A store manager put the comparison simply, the 3000 units of Wii that they received were sold within an hour while that of the Playstation 3 were still sitting on shelves. The price difference is also much to blame, the Playstation 3 costs double of the Nintendo Wii.