| ioi said: Well, I think you need to introduce the concept of how "useful" a console sale is to the manufacturer. For example, the first 5 million people to buy a 360 will spend a lot more money on games, XBL subscriptions, DLC, peripherals and so on than the last 5 million people who may just get a cheap 360 when it hits $99 in 2013 or whenever and pick up a couple of cheap casual games with it (much like the PS2 has been doing for the last 3-4 years). To me, in terms of contribution to the software / peripheral / digital market on the platform, the people who buy a system after it has peaked don't really add that much. By mid 2012 when Wii 2 will probably be out and the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles are announced and shown the "battle" in any meaninful way is really over - all developers are switching support to the new platforms and support will dry right up for this gen aside from a few yearly sports franchises, movie tie-ins and so on so at that point, whether PS3 or 360 manages to sell another 10-15m at cut price doesn't really mean much. So I'm not sure that absolute system sales are really as important as everyone keeps making out. Of the 150m PS2s, over a third of them were sold after the peak at bargain prices so wouldn't have supported that much more software or other additional revenue. As soon as the software support starts to dry up it is really game over. |
But to quantify how little or how much the "cheap" users contribute to total HW and SW sales we'll have to compare total HW and SW sales before and after reaching bargain price, and it's not enough, we'll have to check whether tie ratio at end of life will be higher or lower than when premium price ended and bargain price started. And it won't be a precise estimate anyway, as we won't know how many games will have been bought by old users during the second phase of console life. But anyhow yes, it's very likely that earlier adopters will reach higher tie ratios on average, and 100% sure that at end of console life they'll have paid per head more for every premium service available since launch. This said, any company that haven't exclusivity as a selling point can't ignore the low end of its potential user base, but they can always cater for them keeping on selling the old gen after next gen launches and offering them a good and wide range of bargain editions.
