| Dodece said: I wonder if the hardcore gamers have made a commitment. I suppose they were going to make a choice sooner or later. Perhaps Halo 3 finally pushed them over that edge. A month later with sales that high it can't be the game anymore. Perhaps the game finally turned on the engine, but I think the console is moving itself now. Anyway the sales have been in the same range long enough, and we need to reevaluate our base line for the console. I would say it will be somewhere over a hundred thousand a week in North America through the end of the year. Given that then yes the 360 can win another month. Perhaps even a third, but thats a question for another day. What intrigues me about todays numbers is that the PS3 is terribly close to that twenty thousand sold threshold. Microsoft this week sold five and a half consoles for every PS3 Sony sold. This kind of market loss is staggering. Sony couldn't have gotten that new sku to market at a better time. They need to staunch this bleeding. Halo 3 has lead to a prolonged beating rather then just a black eye. Kind of amazed myself it is still this bad for Sony. What I cannot imaging is Sony making it through the winter if Microsoft continues to lay this beating along with Nintendo. Developers can't ignore that kind of devastation. Anyway technical victories aside looks like we might have a two console race at the very least in one market this year. Well done Microsoft your making a game of it now. Sony is in a fight just to stay in the race. What compelling reading this all makes. |
I'm starting to think it's less Halo 3 the game as it is the mainstream media coverage of its release that is causing this upswell. I've been recently seeing the phrases 'Xbox 360', 'Xbox LIVE', and 'Halo 3' in black and white print far more than I ever have before. Articles about how the console and the game are selling have been on the front page of Google News at least five times since the beginning of September. The news, of course, has all been positive -- the launch was a fantastic success by all accounts.
Conversely, there's been more and more media coverage about how poorly the PS3 is doing. Perhaps there's starting to be a consumer mentality shift where people are seeing such contrasting media attention and it's beginning to affect buyer behavior?
