Famine said: Or think about it this way, the U.S. does not equate to worldwide. A few of those case scenarios of yours still have yet come to pass, such as your higher unemployment example; still nowhere near as close as your country, the Great White North. |
The question in this thread was "Now that Blu-Ray has won, will the PS3 become successful (in America)?" so it doesn't matter what happens worldwide
Beyond that my discussion was what can/will happen in the US economy in the near future, not what is currently happening today; being that the US economy is so dependant on consumer consumption, which is heavily hurt by lower home values and the credit crunch (which are both going to get much worse over the next 12 to 18 months), it is not unreasonable to expect that unnecessary luxury item purchases will decline in the future.
As for your comment on the Canadian labour market ... You can't just look at the unemployment rate across two countries on its own, you must consider the labour force participation rate and in recent times Canada has had a higher participation rate than the United States; 77.9% for Canada vs. 74.9% for the United States in 2001, the most recent year of data for the United States (Canada jumped to 78.4 in 2002 and I have seen several articles about the growing participation rate in Canada since then).
The reason Canada has both a higher unemployment rate and a high participation rate is caused (in part) because in order to collect unemployment insurance from the government you had to work for a certain time frame, the UI eventually runs out so you must find another job, and you remain a participant in the work force for this entire period of time. In the United States, many people who would be unemployed as Canadians end up becomming non-participants because they're neither working nor looking for work.
Anyways, I wasn't saying the PS3 or XBox 360 would see declining sales ... Just suggesting that would need to exist in order for the PS3 or XBox 360 to see a major improvement in sales will not exist in the near future.
