| MikeB said: @ Darc Requiem You just predicited a 140 million unit life time sales for PS3. That is not a sane prediction. Can be less and IMO can also be well more, depending on unknown factors neither you nor I have any real influence on. IMO nothing to become upset about, my prediction (actually "expectation" would be the better word here) stands. Some reasons (amongst many others): - Little room to drop the 360 entry pricing below 119 Euro or 199 Dollar. I think the PS3 will drop more regarding entry pricing the upcoming years. - The most anticipated PS3 games are still under development, all well sold XBox games already saw 360 sequels and there's nothing really major or spectacular on the radar. - The PS3 is very well specced for a long term future, the 360 will not see major technical gains from here on, unless Microsoft decides to screw arcade customers and allow for future games to require a harddrive. Agree with them or not, it doesn't matter enough to get upset. |
Unfortunately reasons are superseded by known factors. Casual consumers by the most hardware. These consumers are also the least likely to purchase more than one console. These are the consumers that propelled the PS1 and PS2 to sales of over 100 million consoles each. Nintendo has been garnering these consumers, in addition to new consumers, since the Wii launched. With the introduction of the $199 Arcade unit MS has made its bid for those consumer dollars. Sony is still well out of their price range and by the time they do reach such a price point Nintendo and MS will have have already tapped that market.
If even these supposed technological gains exist, they will come too late to make a difference. Perception is reality. The perception is that the PS3 isn't more power than the 360. To give you an idea of how strong perception can be, there are still people that believe that the PS2 is more powerful than the Gamecube over seven years after the consoles release. Not only that, you are ignoring one of the most well known quirks of the home console market. The most technology isn't a favorable factor in home console sales. In fact, the more advanced console hasn't never been market leader.
Hardware power means nothing if the majority of developers cannot access it. AM2 could do things on the Saturn that weren't possible on the PS1, but they were the only ones. No other developer thought the time needed to perform such feats was worth it when the could so easily access the power of the PS1 chipset. Why spend all that time developing for a 9 processor nightmare when you could save money by developing for the 3 processor PS1? They didn't care that Shenmue (Saturn) and Virtua Fighter 3 (Saturn) blew away anything they could done on Playstation 1.
When has a significant portion of third party developers supported a last place console beyond the introduction of next gen hardware? If the PS3 is to make to ten years, it will have be almost solely on the backs of Sony internal development studios. Third parties just don't continue to develop trailing hardware platforms without some sort of extenuating circumstance. The reason third party support was so much heavier on X-box and than Gamecube was because MS was willing to provide financial incentive. Sony isn't in a position to do so with the PS3.
