What if it does not work?

[dharh]

welshbloke said:

The signs I think are very promising for the Slim/Price reduction to do everything that Sony need short term, Microsoft do not seem to have done enough to impact its sales and Nintendo are tight lipped.

Sony have been very brave with the price cut and obviously with the investment into the Slim but this got me thinking.

• What point would it be considered not to be working?
• If that point is reached what will that mean for the Playstation brand and Sony?
• Could this apply to Microsoft and Nintendo?

This should not be treated as a flame war I am not suggesting PS3 is doomed, it just seems to me they threw more into this than I expected and if it does not pan out as expected this could be seen as a point in time.

This discussion obviously has the potential to go belly up in which case if that happens please lock the thread.

I pretty much look at 1 thing and thats year over year sales. If they are in decline, the console is having problems or its end of life (like ps2). If the PS3 does not see a good long period of at least +10% YOY gains, then it didn't have the effect SONY wanted. That said, id shudder to think the sales without the price cut (probably greater than -10% YOY losses).

If the price drop plus the slim don't work then SONY should just focus on getting games out. If they pump lots of great games over the next 5 years they might still not reach 1st or 2nd place, but they can at least be profitable until they release PS4. And Obviously they are working on a PS4, I wouldn't release it early (that would mean a high price console again and that will fail hard), focus on making that cost effective (max $349 launch, $299 would rock our socks off).

We _are_ currently in a recession. SONY isn't the only one suffering from lower YOY sales, it just happens that SONY is suffering worse because they are in third place and have been highest price for too long. Nintendo is the only one at this point who I think needs to do something soonish or they are going to continue to see YOY declines in the face of MS/SONY YOY increases.