| Sullla said: It's nice to see an analyst actually predicting that the Wii and 360 will continue to sell strongly, rather than the usual "Wii sales will die off in 2008 and PS3 will (somehow) emerge as the eventual winner." It only took, what, 13 months of sales data to reach that conclusion? Sony fans, don't feel bad about this latest report. Given how bad the predictions have been this generation, this probably means the PS3 is in good shape. |
No straight analyst could possibly think that Wii sales will just die. Not one. Consider that it may not be in stock everywhere until mid 2008, even with nintendo's increased supply. Then, consider that Nintendo hasn't dropped price yet, has only released a fraction of its huge titles, and word of mouth tends to sell the console. Even assuming people are getting sick of the Wii, which doesn't seem to be happening en masse, people are discovering it at a faster rate. There are still a lot of people out there who want a Wii. But they don't know it yet.
Nintendo can likely afford to drop the Wii's price to $99 eventually. How a system that's selling, literally, at a record pace when priced at $250 can somehow fall off of the map despite having a huge potential for still-profitable price drops is just unimaginable to me. I don't see how in the world an analyst could come to that conclusion.
Their idea that it will live 10 years in the same way that the PS2 will live in 10 years is questionable. The reasoning I have is price: the PS3 will have to be significantly cheaper than the PS4 when it is succeeded, likely 2012ish. The PS2 could do this for two reasons:
(1) it was moderately priced hardware its entire life. Its costs never approached the level of the PS3.
(2) The PS3 was so expensive that it helped push the PS2.
If Sony wants to avoid making the "extremely costly console" mistake next time around, and I believe that's why they fired Kutagari, then they may not be able to sell the PS3 cheaply enough to justify its purchase to people considering it or the PS4.
