WWIII?

Even though the 360 is the cheapest current gen console on the market it doesn't give it guranteed sales next year. If people continue to cut back (not including the holiday season - sales are going to surge due to Christmas) then people are going to look for cheaper entertainment. They might continue to buy the DS or even buy last gen consoles. You might also see a lack of gaming systems being purchased and alternate entertaiment being purchased.

 LOL, i knew my first post would be controversial, but anyway. The economy has been a major factor in the X360 having one of its best ever weeks in sales this month, so why would the economy stop that? Wouldn't the PS3 have a better chance of stopping it?

Some websites (and fanboys) seem to have misunderstood what Shane Kim meant. He's talking about the economy in general and the videogame industry as a whole. Anyone that read the actual source article and believes it means they're worried about the PS3 needs to go back and read the article again.

Exactly.

Sega, I don't know why you posted this on a site such as VGchartz, fanboys are going to real the topic title and assume they're talking about Sony without even reading it and mayybe cream their pants a little.

I 100% agree with Shane, it's not like Obama is going to fix everything as soon as he steps into office and there's going to be rainbows and unicorns everywhere. 2009 might have it alot worse than 2008 did, I expect changes to occur middle to late 2010.

I'm not anyone's parent on this forum. I'm not always going to walk people through an article sentence by sentence, if they don't read something and just assume ...well... that's not my problem.

I posted both site articles, that's more then enough.

No rainbows? No unicorns? What were we voting for???

Fair enough.

Leprechauns.

Microsoft is apparently preparing itself for a lean year in gaming. Not just a lean year for them, but a lean year for everybody. There is no harm in being prepared to take measures in regards to being more cost effective. Fortunately for Microsoft at this point in time they are probably one of the leanest manufacturers. They do not have a massive stable of development studios to feed, and given their current market position they can probably pass on buying a few exclusives. I am not terribly worried for them.

Nintendo will probably enjoy diminished sales, but whereas Microsoft is lean. Nintendo enjoys the advantage of always being profitable. So while their console and hand held gaming machines may see diminished sales. I only say this, because they are always through the roof. Which means to me some mildly interested parties which may tighten their purse strings. They will still make a profit without changing anything. They will just make less profit. Even if it gets bad for them they still have a treasury like Microsoft.

Sony is the one I am concerned about, or at least massively aware of. Frankly so should everyone else. Their strategy requires a sustainable momentum to function properly. Were we to see a 20% drop off across the board year over year. Sony would suffer badly even if the margins compared to other manufacturers were the same as early last year. Not only would their hardware be in serious jeopardy, but so to would be their software business. A 20% drop off would mean more then half of their developers would be unprofitable. Something the profitable ones could not counteract.

Sony uses a heavy loss leading model, and according to the rumors they are not going to abandon this model. They are not going to reduce production. So the net result is the same result we had a year and a half ago. Where Sony was churning out machines at an ever increasing rate, but they were going unsold. So Sony had to slash prices until they liquidated the surplus. Sony cannot afford these losses so the end result is that Sony may have to halt production, and that basically means the end of the console. Even if the supply would last for more then a year.