Squilliam said:
1. WoW is a paid service with a lot of essentially similar free services out there and it survives and thrives. Its a network effect as both Live and PSN cannot talk to each other people have to choose what their friends have, not which is cheapest or offers the best price/value. 2. Its compelling for PS3, but until it gets some big sales numbers it doesn't really imply or explain anything. Its big but its not as big as something like Gears of War which defined a whole holiday season somewhat by itself. Its not enough really to bother to list as a reason why the XB isn't doing as well relative to the PS3 at present. 3. Well X % will never go online (1/3rd to 1/2) so theres that. Of the people whom do go online its only a problem for those cross shopping the PS3 and Xbox 360. These are people who haven't been pulled in a particular direction anyway. Most of the people whom a PS3 and Xbox 360 is an equal choice will pick the PS3 because Playstation is the brand they know. In this case whether wireless is there or not is irrelevant. 4. I don't doubt that it exists but you have to consider that X % already have a BR player, X % of people want a seperate one, X % don't want one at all. Its an added feature 'free' so its utility varies. I changed the colour setting on my Bravia, that makes me like one of 5% of people to touch that setting. Its hard to say what impact the feature has for the console, but since it only relates to one specific segment it doesn't speak of the overall dynamic and should probably be ignored as theres too much uncertainty and that metric is changing all the time. |
1. I'm not saying LIVE can't thrive or survive. My point is that at this moment in time, the value and selling point of the service LIVE has been somewhat reduced in the eyes of informed consumers, because of the availability of a very similiar service free of charge on a competiting system. It's just another factor to be weighed up before making a decision.
World of Warcraft is, in my opinion, far and above the best MMO available, it's very accessible and it's had a long time to grow it's install base (many of whom become addicted to it). I would aliken the MMO market to the situation between LIVE and PSN at the start of this gen. One competitor offering a long standing service with a great track record and lots of publicity, going toe to toe with a similiar but much more basic system for free. Gamers were willing to pay for the marked differences. I had a gold account back then.
2. My point was that Uncharted sold systems and will continue too. How is that not a problem? Because of it's scale? It's just one more factor in dozens and dozens influencing a consumers choice at the moment. A new AAA game that looks to outsell the original.
3. I'm not sure it's a non-issue. It's adds value to the console. We can agree to disagree on this one.
4. That's why I said market segment. There's a segment that's interested in both. Sure the consumers overlap into other segments, but the segment no doubt exists. I was simply refuting your statement that implied that becuase there were cheaper standalone BR's available, PS3 sales would not be effected by the added BR. It is, but as you put it, we have no idea to what degree.
I'll just add that the reason for my reply was that you seemed to be dissmissing what could very well be valuable selling points for thousands of consumers. You also seemed to be implying that price and brand name alone were the sole contributing factors to the current level of PS3 sales. While I agree they probably play a vital role in consumers decisions at present, simply stating 'No' to the rest of the selling points just isn't accurate.
