The PS3 needs a price cut here in UK. It already has sort of an unoficial one with various stores dropping the £299 price to from £238 upwards. But most have it at around £280. That's £20 less then what Sony have it at officially.
http://www.findprice.co.uk/fp/Games_Consoles/Compare-prices-Sony-PLAYSTATION-3-Console-80-GB-Model/1849355/product.htm
The thing is with the PS3 sales is they are not bad it's just others are better. If we look at the UK for example which is now the 2nd most important market for gaming we see that this time last year the PS3 had actually sold more units then the 360 had. Proving the more expensive console can outsell the cheaper one if people want it enough.
However the 360 since that price cut almost a year ago has gone from being behind to almost 2m units ahead of the PS3 in UK. A massive turnaround.
The thing is the 360 is not exactly cheap here, it's still £170 at places like game/play. While being cheaper then the PS3 people still don't pay £170 unless they really want to, it is still a lot of money.
So i think the PS3 would naturally benefit from having a price cut. This holiday you would expect them to announce one. If they have a repeat of last holidays where in just december alone the 360 sold a million more then we will probably never see a much cheaper PS3, i could imagine at that point Sony will accept 3rd place and consentrate on getting back into the black. Maybe spend time thinking more about the next gen. One thing is for certain that the PS3 is just months from it's 3rd birthday. History shows that you get the majority of your sales in your first 3 years. PS2's first year it sold 6m (various release dates), 17m in it's second year and 21m in its 3rd year. A total of 44m, almost 35% of it's total sales in just first 3 years. It's 4th year sold 18m, 5th year sold 16m, 6th year sold 15m and then obviously in the 7th year the new gen came out and it sold 11m, then 9m and so on.
So that means in terms of history this year is supposed to be the year the console sell's it's most sales. But if this year stay's as it is then that won't be the case for the PS3 as it will have sold less the last year, quite a bit less.
So in terms of catching up with the 360 and the Wii obviously it needs a price cut. But history is now against it and shows majority of sales are before the end of your 3rd year.
I personally think there will be no price cut this year, Sony will keep things as they are, i don't think they are chasing 2nd place anymore and are now concentrating as i said on making profit, getting back to being a healthy company.
