my thoughts on the sales war between sony and m$

[uber]

TRios_Zen said:

uber said:

 

that's a good point to bring up, and it needs to be addressed.  how does one determine a superior machine?  since there will always be rather significant differences between consoles, it seems to preclude ever being able to speak of such a thing as superiority.  if one requires the consoles to be chiefly the same, then  the notion of superiority loses its meaning.  in order to avoid this quandary we need to be clear is how we define our terms.  i think that in determining superiority it is relevant and important to consider what each respective manufacturer bothered to bring to the table in this gen.  what i'm referring to is what comes in each box.  sony thought it important to include bluray, wifi, etc...., and microsoft thought it best to include a headset or whatever they put in the box. 

when one boils it down, at equal price points the public prefers what sony brings to the next gen table.   this discussion overlooks objective notions of superiority in lieu of brute sales.  i don't subscribe to this thinking, as i've always thought the ps3 was the best system.  i was just trying to make people realize the implication made in saying the 360 needs to be cheaper and bundled out the ass to be competitive again.

I think you might be taking apart your own argument here...

Sony has included stuff in their box; we'll call it their "value proposition", okay?  To achieve "brute sales" greater than the 360, they had to cut the price to increase the percieved value.  IF Microsoft attempts to increase thier "value proposition" by including Natal or further reducing the price, they are responding to a changing market, that is no more a "tacit acknowledgement" of anything, then Sony's original re-design/price cut was.

I don't want to get stuck on semantics here, but I'm finding your original position (that MS fans should acknowlede inferiority) to be discredited by your above response, and your further suppositions to be, well, pretty vanilla.  At the same price point, the public DOES prefer a blu-ray playing, wi-fi having video game console to one that doesn't...I think most people would agree with that.  Microsofts inevitable response (enabled by thier original design decisions) is just that, a response to an evolving market place.  Pretty basic business 101 there. 

So I'm not sure exactly what ARE the implications you are trying to make?

the implication is just as you said.  you just removed the label of superior from the discussion.  you are right that the public has said that at the same price they would prefer the ps3.  that is the bottom line.  halo can't change that.  gears can't change that.  the ps3 had releases that made the public consider preferring the ps3 despite its inflated price.  the fact that the only thing that can make the 360 competitive is either lowering the price or changing their value proposition is, in my opinion, an indictment of the system as a whole.   i think many people still want to hold on to the feeling they had when the ps3 was floundering in weak sales and absent marketing.  they took that as a mandate of the people that the 360 was better and all that jive.  i was merely trying to highlight the folly of such thinking.