Xbox 360 Vs. Playstation 3 2012 - *February* Update

[Reasonable]

Shinobi-san said:

thx1139 said:

Shinobi-san said:
I dont thin Sony can afford bundles like MS are doing...Sony went for the pricecut (which was needed imo) and Ms went for value added bundles. I gotta say MS went with the right decision, and id like to say Sony went with the wrong one but i dont think they had much of a choice, the PS3 is stil quite pricey outside of the US.

Well Sony has had the bundles as well. What MS did was go with more co-marketing deals with retailers.  Im sure MS said we sell X amount of 360s in your stores and you get a rebate or something like that. So the retailers are offering these big gift cards expecting people to use those gift cards on other merchandise that maybe they would have got elsewhere or skipped altogether.

At the end of the day that is going to cost MS, which is what my point is. I dont think Sony can afford to do those kinda deals at the moment (considering it just did a global price cut). Yes they have bundles, but lets face it, those bundles are standard bundles that gives a higher profitability on each console sold, rather than a genuinely good deal.

Im not saying Sony are ripping people off or that the bundles are bad, they just not as good as 360 bundles.

This trend seems to be world wide though. And id imagine its mostly to do with the base price of the ps3 which is stil quite high and yet stil is sold at a loss. Theres no leeway for generous bundles.

You're probably right.  MS are probably funding a part if not all of the gift cards, etc. as part of a a vendor funded promotion.  Sony has pinned it's hopes on the price cut increasing baseline demand coupled with a number of bundles driven by content within its control.  MS has heaviliy pushed gift card/bundle combinations which appear fantastically good value to consumers - and represent a real terms huge price drop for 360 to the buyer.

I've said since this whole topic started off that this would be MS strategy and if they did mannage to nab first place it would primarly be via the US market driven by extremely good bundles/offers almost certainly funded by MS themselves.

It's now looking to be close - and TBH I feel more and more it's going to head for a statistical tie (i.e. they will be within a few percent of each other for the year whichever way it goes).  I'm very curious to see how MS and Sony respond publicly if it is very close - I'm not sure how either could cite accurate enough sources to claim a sure fire win.  Guess we'll see soon enough.