| kn said: I keep reading articles about how the 360 is dead and the PS3 has been annointed the new king. That's pretty interesting given the amount of negative press the PS3 got last year -- but I digress. That said, the 360 still has a fairly significant lead over the PS3 and it's going to take quite a bit of time for the PS3 to catch the 360. Just for grins, I pulled the data from the total sales data worldwide from Dec 1 to March 29 from this site. The PS3 outsold the 360 by about 800K total consoles worldwide during those 4 months. That means about 200K/month on average which is pretty significant. Assuming a 200K/month average will hold for the next couple of years (expect that MS will do what it takes to keep the difference from getting out of control...), We are looking at 2.4 million units per year. Given there is a current difference of 6.45 million consoles, we are STILL looking at a little under 3 years for the PS3 to catch the 360 or in terms of date, I would expect it around holidays 2010. There are a few things to consider. By 2010, I suspect we will start hearing rumblings of the next-gen Xbox assuming they are going to participate next gen. The install base of both consoles, assuming sales follow the above pattern to some degree, will be somwhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 million consoles (and tied). With that many consoles, developers aren't going to stop making games for the 360 -- quite the contrary. The PS3 may, in fact, win the overall hardware race this generation, but if it does, it is going to be MUCH later in the generation than before and the number of installed machines from competitors would be significant and mean they will never completely dominate like the PS2 did. Give the above assumptions (based on current data), I would hardly call the 360 dead and/or annoint the PS3 the winner of this generation. Obviously if either console makes a major move in terms of price, it will likely skew data quite a bit and all this goes out the window... Feel free to comment on my assumptions/thoughs, but please check your fanboyism at the door. Keep in mind that I'm intentionally ignoring the Wii as I still don't consider it to be competing for the same group of gamer's dollars. Clearly the Wii is well on its way to destroying both the 360 and PS3 in terms of total install base. |
Your analysis is correct, even with major price moves. Microsoft can make Xbox 360's cheaper than Sony can make PS3's and they are already profiting significantly. Count on them being able to maintain as significant price differential for a long time to come.
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