DélioPT said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:
DélioPT said:
TheSource said:
I don't have the figures for Europe, but the most interesting thing about the recent data is that you can no longer argue Wii users are buying other consoles in the US. The console figures in the US for May were the lowest since May 2000 (by NPD), and comparable to 1997 / 1998, during the height of the N64 / PS1 days when selling 350,000-400,000 consoles in the US market was considered amazing.
(...)
Basically, figures have been abysmal in January, April, and May - and bad from January - May. We're heading for a 2004-2005 like year in the USA...which is not good.
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If you consider just home consoles, do things look better or worse? I got a feeling it looks worse...
Do you think there`s a chance price cuts will help or this late in their lifecycles, it won`t change things?
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IMVHO this late it won't raise sales much, but it will slow decline and extend consoles' life, while SW sales should be very healthy anyway, as long as new games are released, given the existing and still growing, although more slowly, user bases. Obviously when they'll want HW sales to grow again they'll need to launch next gen consoles and, if they want, cut this gen price again and keep on selling them as entry level. It's just like previous gens, except the gen's leader isn't anymore overwhelming like PS2 was or Wii itself was until two years and a half ago.
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Price cuts do help raise HW but this time i think the effect will be short term. It`s been too many years without a price cut+too many years on the market for people to wait for it and then buy a console+a lot of sales last holiday season were due to price discounts.
I don`t know about software, but i was the impression that, overall, SW sales or sales revenue has come down aswell.
PS2 sold, if i remember correctly, about 50 million consoles after PS3 came out and of course i believe all consoles will still sell after next-gen kicks in. Problem is, no console, not even Wii, is at the level of PS2 to keep on selling for that long and that well. PS2 was something special.
Xbox 360 and PS3 and their successors will go for the exact same market and many people will just opt for the new consoles and leave very little room for Xbox 360 and PS3 to keep on selling. That, or they will hamper PS4 and Xbox720.
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Yes, a possible sales rise will be short-lived, but the effect of delaying the decline will last longer, extending their life.
Wii is already cheap, so there's not much anymore that a price cut can do for it, particularly if there are too few new games and too few 1st party classic budget priced, but PS3 is still quite expensive, and XB360 too, if bundled with kinect and/or if the buyer wants a version with a HDD, price drops can still expand their audiences a little bit if games keep on coming. We won't see PS2 or DS numbers, but they can both reach a 9 years or more market life and 90M or more lifetime sales.
When both XB360 and PS3 will be cheap, their markets, big or little that it be, won't be the same of latest gen, full-priced consoles. But with more games released and a vast library of budget edition classics aimed at their new audience, they'll be able to sell better than what Wii is doing now (but Wii could remain the gen winner, thanks to the huge lead earned during its first years of monster sales).
And both XB360 and PS3 will need another price drop after the next one to have a chance to sell more than 100M lifetime, they'll both need to unlock another part of their potrential market. Also, to avoid possible cannibalizing damages to PS4 and XB720, current gen consoles will have to be positioned very far away from them on the market, both in price and HW power, and on this issue a Q4 2013 or later launch should help MS and Sony a lot.
