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Wii installed base growing more quickly than PS2's did
During E3, Nintendo gave a presentation to analysts about the company's new offerings and its current status. Reggie Fils-Aime presented the above slide, which shows the startling truth about the Wii's installed base in the United States: in its fourth year on the market, it's larger than the ubiquitous PlayStation 2's installed base at the same point in its life, by a margin of almost five million units. Of course, the PS2 has had a spectacularly long lifespan after that, with Sony announcing 7.2 million units sold just last year. Later in the presentation, Reggie revealed that around 300,000 units of the black Wii console have been sold since its May 9 introduction in North America, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 is "approaching 900,000 units here in the U.S."
Microsoft settling in for second place?
OK, fanboys, before you hit that spittle-flecked "post comment" button after just reading that inflammatory headline question, hear us out. We're not just idly speculating here -- we're basing our query on an unusually frank quote from Microsoft Senior Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick. In an interview with BusinessWeek, Mattrick said that he's "not at a point where I can say we're going to beat Nintendo." Coming from a guy whose job it is to promote Microsoft's position in the market, that's a pretty big admission of doubt. It's not just Mattrick that's doubtful-- analyst Billy Pidgeon told the magazine, "I expect the 360 to remain in second place this generation. But it's going to be close."The question, then, becomes how much this sales position really matters. Microsoft's sales might fall just shy of Nintendo's, but that doesn't seem to be hurting the company's ability to attract big-name games or roll out new features for the system. In fact, with Nintendo's decidedly less powerful system catering to a decidedly different audience, Microsoft's position relative to Nintendo might not matter nearly as much as their position relative to Sony. And on that score Mattrick has no doubt: "We will sell more consoles this generation than Sony," he told BusinessWeek.
iPhone: How many Hackers?
The iPhone appears to have an installed base somewhere upwards of one million units according to Apple's official numbers. A majority of those units have been sold to early adopters; that is people with a certain adventurous spirit, not just those who got to the story early. Some have been hacked by hand, others through tools like AppTapp. Hard data on the number of hacked units is indirect. I haven't been able to get in touch with "lg", the man behind AppTapp/Installer.app but I was able to talk to other developers: there have been over 70,000 Open SSH downloads and upwards of 600,000 unique visits to the SMXY repository this month. Since only a portion of Installer.app users will install SSH, that hints at a much bigger base. What is my best guess? I'm thinking conservatively that between 10-20% of early adopters have hacked their iPhones for third party software and that a similar number are unlocking their iPhones for non-AT&T service; and, no, I'm not sure what the overlap might be. Either way, I expect the software-hacks to plunge as we enter the holiday season where most purchases will be from less adventurous customers and the unlock percentages to rise as the iPhone hits Europe. Thanks to Shaun Erickson and Nate True.Update: The fabulous Drudge has uploaded a complete breakdown for his most popular hosted packages. In addition, he reports nearly 800,000 unique visits between the Conceited and SMXY repositories. Even taking EDGE into account, that's a lot of visits. "Kroo" lent his able assistance to the stats gathering effort.
