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greenmedic88 on 09 August 2008
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With the dropping inventory of 40GB SKUs, PS3 sales have nowhere to go but down until its 80GB replacement is widely available.

The options now are either hunt down a 40GB, which is silly, considering there is nothing premium about the SKU, or simply wait a month or two and pay the exact same price for a larger HDD when they are available.

A sizable percentage of consoles is unquestionably sold to the walk in customer. If they don't find one at the retail outlets they typically frequent, they're not going to buy one until stock is readily available enough that they do.

Most people won't pay a premium through Ebay unless they're fairly desperate to find one, and there is nothing about the 40GB to command a premium price.

There's always the used option, but the typical consumer doesn't deal in used consoles either. That's more of a typical gamer behavior done to make multi-platform gaming cheaper.

As it stands, my guess would be that the majority of current PS3 sales are the MGS4 bundles, which isn't going to appeal to most customers who simply want the lowest price (and presumably have no intention of buying MGS4 anyway). Only a small percentage of people will buy the bundle with a game they don't want, and then go through the trouble of hawking the game on Ebay or Craigslist (not all that uncommon though).

If the 80GB SKU is shipped in ample supply, there should be a decent surge in hardware sales once they're available before leveling off, and then surging once again as the holiday season starts to ramp up.

I'm also thinking that the MGS4 bundle may soon be discontinued on the basis that it will cost more than an 80GB Core SKU along with a copy of MGS4 bought separately. Yes, the MGS4 SKU still has BC, but sales of the 40GB SKU alone have proven that this is not a major selling bullet point for the typical consumer. It boils down to a $40 premium for an unmarked (only well known to typical gamers) feature that many PS3 owners have no intention of using.