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Seece on 17 September 2010
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NeoRatt said:
09tarheel said:

Decent numbers for all for being a low point in the sales year. The DS being so high seems strange knowing the succesor is just around the corner. Has there ever been a time when a console that was still regularly leading weekly hardware sales had a succesor released? I'm thinking maybe the PS1? I don't know if the GBA was outselling it at the time the PS2 was released though.

Also, it seems that a lot of people still seem to think that it was the $100 PS3 price cut last year that has led to the higher sales. With the 360s performing so well without a pricecut, I really think it was the slim redesign that had the much larger impact, with the pricecut just being an extra incentive.

I think the Wii will probably drop for the next couple weeks without major releases and the time of the year trends. I think Nintendo can get away without a pricecut on the Wii if they are agressive in other ways, like special liited bundles on Black Friday, lots of advertising (including advertising major 3rd party titles), maybe a price cut on the Wii Fit plus package.

With Reach and Move in next week's data, it seems like the sales should really be interesting from here on through the holidays.

Last year, I think it was mostly slim price cut that drove the PS3.  PS3 needed to drop in price to attract new owners, and existing owners would not have moved to slim had the price not dropped.  I don't think PS3 slim would have been as successful at $399 and $499.  $299 and $399 made it much more attractive.

360 is different.  Design issues like the noise (DVD and internal fans) and the constant fear of RRoD are driving 360 sales by themselves.  And the fact that 360 already has a $199 price point is helping.  Although the new 360 is slimmer, it is really not that much slimmer.  I think there are two demographics buying 360 slim right now.  Mostly existing owners who have decent game libraries and are afraid their old 360 will RRoD one day.  And (to a much lesser extent) new owners who were looking (but too scared) to buy a 360 because of RRoD before.

Microsoft is probably very happy right now.  They haven't done a "real" price drop (I don't count giving a bigger drive for the same price a price drop) in nearly two years but the console is still selling strong at $199, $299, and $399.  It puts them in a position where they are making plenty of money on consoles sold and probably have plenty of room to do a price drop when Sony drops their hammer.

Unless Sony drops price ASAP, 360 has the holiday season in the bag.   Sony doesn't have an exclusive hard core campaign or story game to compete with Halo Reach and Fable III.  They do have GT5 which will help with the existing base and GT fans that still own PS2's. But there is no reason to buy a new PS3 console if you have one already.  And people have to wonder how many consoles GT5 will really push given that Forza 3 is a very good racing game already (I do think GT5 is better though), and GT5 Prologue probably already moved a lot of consoles even though it was perceived as a demo.

Move won't sell as many consoles as people think. This is only because it is perceived that Move is not much more innovative then the WiiMote and Sony doesn't have a game like Mario Galaxy/WiiSports to attract the demographic they need for Move for it to push consoles.  It still remains to be seen whether Kinect will catch on.  The idea behind the device is innovative, but the games may be too Wii-like and lacklustre to sell more consoles.

good post. Just think how much Money MS are gonna be making this holiday, they'll be making hefty products on all consoles, kinect and games.