I hate when people say that something is "illuminating" or "interesting" to avoid saying what they're really thinking (in this case, "360 up loads, PS3 doing terribly").

If your analysis is fair/accurate (and yours here is, kowenicki), then you won't be attacked for saying what it shows.

Honestly, it has to be my biggest pet peeve on VGC.

Oh really?

Mmm, but you've done it before inside of threads, e.g. yesterday when you said "360 > PS3 + PS2, interesting".

I'm not attacking you at all. If anything, I'm on your side because I know if you say what you're really thinking, even when you're right, some irrational fanboys will still scream that you're trolling.

Really 12% YoY drop does not seem that bad. The hardware does not make them money anyways. They are selling plenty of software. If they can just coast through 2009 at that level then why change when it seems they have a formula to make money: sell hardware only at breakeven or better, sell tons of software, make money. Dropping the price and losing money again half way through the gen would be risky, as the time for them to break even on the PS3 today is a lot shorter than it was in 2006.

Add 2007 as well, it'll probably give even a better idea. Could we even trust only two years if we were to analyze this much?

People often refer to the price drop making all the difference for Microsoft but in fact it was a combination of events which coincided in my opinion to create a perfect marketing storm.

Price cut and timing (In particular the price of the revamped Arcade units).
Highly anticipated games.
Change in OS (NXE) and the new functionality (Netflix, Install to disc etc).