| Kyros said: and the 360 has an edge in America no it doesn't look at the sales. |
The point is that the 360's installed base advantage is not about to dwindle away anytime soon. So regardless of whether or not the PS3 is barely outselling the 360 in America, it's installed base advantage will all but certainly keep it above the PS3 in America for years to come.
NJ5: Nice article. You are correct with the overview / big picture of everything: the 360 and PS3 have basically tied and the result for the foreseeable future is that they're at the same success level and developer desirability level. If anything, the 360 is more desirable right now from a dev perspective, but this will probably shift toward the PS3 over the next couple of years. And yet, it's basically a tie.
You'll find a lot of people here to argue with you on the details, obviously, because the trend right now is that the PS3 has been improving relative to the 360, despite the 360's installed base advantage which is not going away anytime soon. Best case scenario for the PS3, the it will catch the 360 WW in mid 2009, then it will have a year or so where it enjoys the slight advantage the 360 currently has. Right now we have tie-advantage 360, and in two years we might have tie-advantage PS3.
However, the question for these two consoles is what the heck happens 3 or 4 years from now. Does the 360 die abruptly like the Xbox does giving MS no hope of it actually being a profitable product? I have a reasonable amount of faith in Sony's overall plan with the PS3 which should make it a significantly profitable product all things considered, but the 360 looks like it will probably lead MS to a couple of marginally profitable years at best, never even approaching overall profit, then go away like the original Xbox did.
The PS3 may still be able to follow the 10 year life cycle, remaining a popular product through seven or eight years of its life, the last few of which will occur while the PS4 gains traction. The only question is whether or not Sony can cost-reduce the PS3 enough to profit at the $150 or $100 price point necessary when you launch a new console at $300 or $400.
