joeorc said:
the Question would they take that Risk? we are in a recession right now, not to mention the PS3 an the xbox360 or the Wii has yet to reduce their price point to where say the $149.00 price is, or the $99.00 price point, if the companies were going to release early why not just release ARC and NATAL as a main product to push the next system over these. the big problem aside of most likely Nintendo , is these system's are pretty good system's and people still feel they are too new: what I mean there is nowhere in the short run that make's sense to release a whole new system when the recession being how it is, people are loosing their house, you cannot play a game console if you have no house to put it in. since the system's all has downloadable game's , and content what will the new system's have over these system in say a year or two from now that will be such a wide upgrade that would make the developer's drop these system's and go over too the other system's. not much of an increase are the new systems going to be over these as there are of these system's over the previous system's the leap in the next two year's is not going to great enough at a reduced price that the companies like microsoft or sony or nintendo is going to offer that would dry up the sale's of current machine's. say if there is new system's get released in 2011 what will the leve of the graphic's be over these current system's, the only one i can see get a big jump would be the Nintendo Wii but then again , that still would be sold for a premium over the cost of the Wii, and the Wii would still be selling. it's just not worth releasing that soon In my OPINION. mainly the recession has done that more than anything though. |
, If anything there will be less of a reason for people to upgrade this soon, many people still think of these system's as still new system's not everyone went out and bought the xbox360 for $299.00 and $399.00 off the batt just lke $499.00 and $599.00 PS3.There are risks of doing nothing after the market has reached a saturation point. A combination of used game sales, old/budget game sales, piracy, and competition for game sales from multi-console ownership can cause a plateau or a reduction in sales revenue and profit generated from these platforms; and it is unlikely that share-holders will accept stagnant or falling revenues or profits for any period of time without some sort of action.
On top of this, the longer a generation goes on without a new console being released the greater the opportunity is for a new entrant into the market; and if you’re not prepared to counter this new entrant with your own system release there is a possibility that they could capture the market in the "next generation" before you have the opportunity to act. While I don’t see many companies that would make a jump to the console market at the moment, few people really would have predicted Microsoft entering into the console market a couple of years before that happened.
With that said, the timeline I am thinking of for console releases (late 2011 to the end of 2013) is likely to be at a point where most of the worst of the recession is behind us; and even if it isn’t videogame console sales should be mostly unaffected by a recession. The reason why videogame sales are a safe haven in a recession is that entertainment is really a necessity, people look to reduce their costs on the necessities they buy, and videogames are a very cheap form of entertainment. When you start to look at the costs a family incurs to stay entertained for a couple of hours outside of their house, a videogame console doesn’t look expensive in comparison; and when you look at a single (adult) a couple trips to the bar can be as expensive as a console.
Now, on the topic of Natal and the Arc, I think there will be a lot of disappointment when people start to look at the sales of these add-ons. Certainly, when you compare the sales of these devices to a typical game they will seem to have performed very well, but I expect they will sell far short of the level most consoles would be proclaimed a massive failure for selling to.
