KruzeS said: scotland yard said: It's likely the warranty upgrade was responsible for the upswing. Why is that? Warranty is already a given in Europe.

For two years, yes, but it was the level of service that people hated, not the time of warranty. You'd have to send your machine out of the country to get it fixed, and it used to take months. I had a friend who had to send his to Prague, inexplicably. The new warranty/repair situation has hugely improved the time it takes to get your console fixed. Plus, I think people were just happy they owned up to the problem instead of pretending it was a series of freak accidents.

as soon as sony drops the price in europe its gonna outsell the 360 weekly just like it was doing before the 360 got its price drop

scotland yard said: For two years, yes, but it was the level of service that people hated, not the time of warranty. You'd have to send your machine out of the country to get it fixed, and it used to take months.

Europeans don't know their rights... really, they're so many!

I'm pretty sure there's a maximum time frame of 30 days (I'm pretty sure it's 30, but it might be 60, or some equivalent amount specified in weekdays) where you must get your problem solved: either a fix to your unit, a refurb, an equivalent item, or a refund. Also, I'm pretty sure you don't have to send anything anywhere, unless you'd rather deal with the brand directly, as otherwise the store where you purchased the item is ultimately responsible.

I expect the 360 to outsell the PS3 - maybe by 20% (maybe more) - in 'Others' over the next months.

The PS3 has already had its price cut - the 360 price cut is just starting to filter through. Combine this with the massive marketing campaign MS will roll out for Halo 3 (and backup titles), and it should easily win.

But I think the PS3 will do pretty well as well - hence only a 20% difference.

(the Wii should still win - but this will depend SOLELY on hardware shipment figures - not released software. If Ninty decide to ship more units to the US/Japan than Europe - I would understand...).

shams said: I expect the 360 to outsell the PS3 - maybe by 20% (maybe more) - in 'Others' over the next months. The PS3 has already had its price cut - the 360 price cut is just starting to filter through. Combine this with the massive marketing campaign MS will roll out for Halo 3 (and backup titles), and it should easily win. But I think the PS3 will do pretty well as well - hence only a 20% difference. (the Wii should still win - but this will depend SOLELY on hardware shipment figures - not released software. If Ninty decide to ship more units to the US/Japan than Europe - I would understand...).

 Ähm. Well at the moment the Wii isn't supply constraint in others, so demand is met, at least for the moment. Also what price cut on the PS3? 

 

For the "Trend". Could also be an error in the data or tracking problem. The 360 was overtracked in germany, the PS3 undertracked in Italy. As far as i know, ioi didn't correct that yet. The 360 had a boost last week caused by the price drop, but if it realy outsold the PS3, i doubt it. Sony said they had a much higher boost by the starter pack than this site shows. I think ioi has a too hard time to get correct data for "Others" to make statement based on just one week.

Just_Ben said: Ähm.

 That was german. In English you say "uhm"

Louie said: Just_Ben said: Ähm. That was german. In English you say "uhm"

 Pffff, on tiny tiny little word, really Louie: "Du bist ein I Tüpfel Reiter" :P

shams said: I expect the 360 to outsell the PS3 - maybe by 20% (maybe more) - in 'Others' over the next months. The PS3 has already had its price cut - the 360 price cut is just starting to filter through. Combine this with the massive marketing campaign MS will roll out for Halo 3 (and backup titles), and it should easily win. But I think the PS3 will do pretty well as well - hence only a 20% difference. (the Wii should still win - but this will depend SOLELY on hardware shipment figures - not released software. If Ninty decide to ship more units to the US/Japan than Europe - I would understand...).

As this is Europe we're talking about, then the PS3 has not had it's price cut, just been upgraded to a starter pack, so there may well be a price cut before or around xmas.

My personaly opinion is that I agree with mitsuhide, that Microsoft has little loyalty from it's consumers, and that Sony/Playstation will still be well thought of. I also think that Nintendos image has been vastly improved since the era of the GC, when people only viewed it as a bit of a joke (the colour scheme didn't exactly help, excluding GBA of course). I think that by next generation that Sony and Nintendo will be on equal footing.

But on topic, I think that hardware problems have seriously damaged the 360s chances, especially the fact the customer support is so crap. Mate of mine for RRoD, and it took him like 2 months to get it back, which is ridiculous, and I know there anre many similar stories aswell. Frankly, I think people view Microsoft as a huge company that doesn't care for Europe once they've given them money. So I reckon that unless the new motherboard fixes things (are they replacing the faulty disk drive aswell?) and they imporve their awful customer support that the PS3 will beat it continuously in monthly sales by the end of next year.

KruzeS said: scotland yard said: For two years, yes, but it was the level of service that people hated, not the time of warranty. You'd have to send your machine out of the country to get it fixed, and it used to take months. Europeans don't know their rights... really, they're so many! I'm pretty sure there's a maximum time frame of 30 days (I'm pretty sure it's 30, but it might be 60, or some equivalent amount specified in weekdays) where you must get your problem solved: either a fix to your unit, a refurb, an equivalent item, or a refund. Also, I'm pretty sure you don't have to send anything anywhere, unless you'd rather deal with the brand directly, as otherwise the store where you purchased the item is ultimately responsible.

The timeframe depends on the kind of product. At minimum i would recall it's 2 weeks and mostly the "reasonable time period" is one month. I'm not sure about how much this differs between countries, but it bases on the pan-EU law. I give you an example: couple of years ago my brothers ADSL modem broke down, and we took it for fixing, since it had still the warranty. It was broken because of thunder, so warranty didn't cover it, but since it took 2 months to get it back (not within reasonable time), i demanded something to make up the delay and my brother got a new modem, just because it took so long. The reason why most people don't know their rights, is because the law is relatively new, it's just about 3 or 4 years old and propably most the retailers don't understand it completely. Basically the law is the same, that Finland has had for decades, only with few implementations. Biggest change is that retailer has the responsibility, along importer and manufacturer, that the product works. @Just Ben: It doesn't seem to be available constantly in all the stores, but generally Wii is available. @Topic: The brand effect is interesting, PS is strong brand in EU, but the PS2 quality issues have propably hurt it, in the way how it is seen. Also Sonys DRM issues and generally bad quality of it's products doesn't really help Sony. But if you had to pick someone who has even worse name than Sony, it would be Micro$oft, everybody hates Windows and EU fining Micro$oft doesn't really help M$ to gain any better reputation. Some countries like Italy, where every other console than PlayStation, is pretty much non-existent (by counting for example shelf space), may have pretty quick change, after retail realises that they could make more money by giving more shelf space to other consoles, and in that case, Wii may have effect in eating PS3 sales even more than it already have. The situation is this: You can find PS3 and plenty of games from any electronics store, but not necessarily Wii or any market that sells electronics have PS3 and games, but not necessarily Wii, not to talk about games, since some stores have Wiis, but no games. So if Wii keeps selling, the shelf space issue changes and PS3 may see, possibly even rapid, decline in sales and 360 may keep selling as it has. Btw. I think that one thing which have had big effect for the strong PS brand is, that Sony managed to bring games to stores other than just electronics/specialised stores. They have pretty good distribution channels, which they had used.

Here in the Netherlands the Ps brand isn't that big, even the Wii name isn't according to an article in the newspaper, the 360 is outselling both. This may or may not interest you at all, but to me it was very surprising.