Wii worst year for sales already? really???

[nightsurge]

superchunk said:

nightsurge said:

 

I'm glad you put imo because I really have a hard time agreeing with any of that.  What slim model did 360 have in March?

The 360 doesn't need a price cut to sustain levels.  That has been made apparent over the last 2 months now.  Going into the holiday with the momentum behind it, the sales will increase in proportion to how they have in the past, meaning the sales will be higher than even 2008 levels (360's top year so far).  Also, with the overwhelming demand and hype building for Kinect amongst casuals, I think it is safe to say that will be a strong hardware driver for this holiday, far stronger than PS Move will be for the PS3.

If the 360 does cut price, which it likely won't now that sales have shown not to need one, the PS3 would be very VERY unlikely to match the price.  They still aren't making profit in that division, do you think Sony will want to take another $50 loss per machine again after just becoming profitable on hardware?  They didn't match price in 2008 when the 360 took off and I don't see any reason why/how they could this time.

All in all, Reach, Gears 3, Fable 3, and Kinect will be plenty to drive demand for the 360, far far greater than Move GT5 for the PS3 imo.

Sorry, March was wrong, meant with E3 in June. My fault.

I think you are overestimating the number of people buying the 360 now. Its been  a lot of those grabbing up the cheaper old models as well as people replacing their models. I'd bet when the next quarterly reports come out and if MS discusses the number of new unique XBLive accounts you'll realize there is no significant jump.

Sony is profitable on the PS3 now and has been for months. They could match any price cut MS would do at this point and remain profitable. I also don't think either company will however, I don't think it is impossible. If it weren't for the staggered launch of the xbox slim models and the subsequent clearance of old stock, xbox numbers would have already fallen to or below PS3 levels.

This will be self evident in September.

In June the 360 managed 670k units. Given the launch was in the last half of June and it happened later outside of NA, July is where the real full effect can be seen. July sold 980k units. However, with 1/2 of August over its only at 425k units and is declining every week. So, by end of month (August) 360 will be at less than 800k. By end september it will be down to less than 500k easily and therefore below PS3. This is assuming no pricecut before end of September of course.

 

425

No, Sony could NOT match a 360 price cut and remain profitable.  They only profit by very slim margins (no pun intended) on the hardware.  Not even 10%.  The 360 on the other hand has racked up a laundry list of cost savings over the last 2 years (die shrinks, cpu/gpu merge, mobo shrink, cooling shrink, psu shrink, casing shrink, etc) and has yet to cut the price.  They could take quite possibly take a $100 cut on hardware if they really wished and break even or take only a very mild loss.  If they did a more realistic $50 cut, the PS3 would again be losing anywhere between $30-40 on hardware again.

Also, the 360, even if it had no staggered launch of the slim, would be nowhere NEAR PS3 or below numbers.  It was settling at 40k above PS3 weekly numbers in Americas and another 25-30k above PS3 numbers in Others.  After the Arcade S effect wears off it will still settle far above the PS3 numbers.  With Reach coming in a few weeks, and then the holiday sales picking up, the 360 is going to be staying above PS3 numbers for the rest of the year save for a week or 2 following GT5 launch.

Btw, the new 360S is still struggling to meet demand.  They are cleared out of shelves within a day or two of restocking.  That's pretty clear that the deman and production for these units has not quite been met yet.

The Arcade 360S has yet to show up in Others numbers.  With over 124k in Americas last week following Arcade S launch, Others is likely to be about the same for next week.  The sales only dropped 9k in Americas to 115k this week and the Americas numbers will likely be around 105k range for the next 2 weeks.  Others will follow a similar decline if maybe slightly less.  So for the last 2 weeks of the month the 360 will sell easily another 400-500k units pushing this month's total to ~900k units again.  There is no way that it's going to drop by 400k units in just one month's time with Halo: Reach and the beginning of the holidays/Kinect hype effect taking place.

I'm sorry but I just don't see how you can be low balling it so much given all the evidence in front of you.