| Shadow1980 said: So, it appears the XBO is up only 7% from last January. Not too great considering it's $150 cheaper than it was last January. But the PS4 is down almost 30%. While this isn't unprecedented — the Wii was down big time in its second January compared to its first — and it certainly isn't bad numbers-wise considering it's still at $400, but I think if it's still down YoY through the rest of the quarter, Sony may institute a price cut by this summer. The PS2's first price cut was in May 2002, while the PS1 & PS3 already had their first price cuts in their first year. Even with solid games, sales aren't going to grow until they cut the price. |
I think this is essentially correct. Others may have misinterpreted your comments to mean that 'sales aren't going to grow (past January levels) until they cut the price', whereas I read the situation as :
These sales of PS4 at $399 are showing the weakening of the market for a $400 console. There are a finite number of people willing to blow nearly half a grand on a game console these days, particularly when more casual owners of previous gen consoles are likely to have notebooks, smartphones, tablets, and other consoles already capable of doing an acceptable job of gaming platform for them. So getting those users on board will take a new price point altogether. There is a huge psychological barrier at $299 that opens the door up to a dramatically larger market. I think it's easily fair to say that PS4 has already been the most successful $400 console in history to this point, but there comes a time where it's just unthinkable not to open the door to the masses. $400 is basically a luxury tier for many families, and while $299 isn't hugely cheaper, the price becomes infinitely more acceptable due to conditioning over the years where a console feels like it SHOULD be priced. Now obviously even at $399, sales will go up and down based on time of year, exclusives, multiplats, yadda/infinity, but we're well past the point where cutting the POE to a mass-market level will truly bring a stampede of new buyers.
People looking back on older consoles that were higher than $300 didn't do all that well at those prices for very long, it really took a knock into the sub-$300 range to get into the 75m+ LTD range in a meaningful way.
It brings an interesting thought to the table though, if PS4 gets cut straight to $299 (a historic price for PS consoles by the way), skipping the $329/$349, where does that leave X1? $249? I don't think they would be willing to go that far tbh. And at price parity (or even $50 cheaper), it seems that X1 is doomed to 2nd place ad infinitum.
So the real question of 2015 will be answered with Sony's PS4 pricing plans. If they go to $299, they will bust all kinds of sales records. If they choose $349, expect moderate success, but nothing mind blowing. And then : when? E3 would be incredibly wise to start with, but maybe they hold till fall. At some point they have to get proactive with the situation. If everyone sits on their hands, the entire market stands to lose. $349, $399, etc are simply too expensive for a big generation to be built on. Breaking even or even taking a small loss to hit $299 will bring a TON of software/peripheral sales to them over the years, and imho it should have actually been started in December.
