Man, Did Some People Get This Gen Wrong

[vivster]

thismeintiel said:

vivster said:

That tackles only one of my concerns and isn't even that clear cut. I don't think Sony can afford an unplanned pricecut of even $50. Even if the cost of producing the console drop they were still calculating with the original price, which means at 5 million sold consoles that would make a 250 million dent in the forecast for just one division of Sony. I don't think Sony is in a position to throw away money. They are not losing the war and they will not go to great lengths if a competitor is just catching up.

For me, a lot of concerns were addressed in March.  MS threw everything they had at Sony, but still lost.  Releasing their most hyped game for the year.  Check.  The game bundled free with the console.  Check.  $50 dollar (unofficial) pricecut around the time of the game's launch.  Check.  Massive ad campaign to push the game and console.  Check.  All this amounted to was a lower sales average per week than last month and Sony still being comfortably ahead.  And if what BenV was saying is true, then April is not going to be pretty for MS, either.

Truthfully, what MS NEEDS to do if they want to win (maybe even just tie) the US is drop Kinect and drop the price to $349.  Of course, MS isn't going to be this drastic, otherwise investors will be livid.  That and they would have millions of Kinects just lying around with no one buying them.  The most I see is the current SKU dropping to $449 officially.  But, we have already seen that that won't do much.

I admit this NPD was a breather but we're not out of the woods yet. I don't think we have seen yet what MS is willing to do when backed into a corner.

Dropping the price via television subscription and market it as a cable box could do wonders in the US. And then there is China. I don't believe it yet but if they actually manage to release the console there this year and it's succesful it could turn the tide quickly. Not directly in the rest of the world but they would be able to announce bigger numbers which would give them more marketing power.

Let's just not be "those" guys and someone in the future make a thread out of our pompous behavior. There will be lots of opportunity to celebrate throughout this gen after we're over that first hill.