| MikeB said: Yes, that makes sense. The PS3 only has to significantly outperform the 360 at this point of time, Sony sold 1.85 million more PS3s than Microsoft sold 360s in an equal timeframe by March 2008. The Nintendo Wii is a very different product which can easily co-exist with the PS3 within people's homes in the future. If Sony would have aimed to outsell the Wii, it would have put them into serious financial problems. Now the costs are under control well enough so that Sony tripled their profits for Sony's last fiscal year. The profitable PS2 sold well (much better than the 360) last year, this to compensate significantly for PS3 market investments. The PS3 is really built for a long term future, its processor holds more performance potential than even the top workstation targeted Xeon processors (this at much less wattage). It will also take a while until Blu-Ray drives are standard within the PC market. Expect Sony to push the PS3 much more when a cheaper profitable slimline PS3 is ready. The current PS3 did what it had to accomplish at this point, win Sony the Blu-Ray format war, quickly reducing the 360's headstart sales advantage and push developers towards more efficient and powerful game engine design. The current PS3 paves the way for the success of a future slimline PS3 and eventually a new Cell technology based PS4. |
I'm sorry Mike, but this is the worst spin I've ever seen from you.
Dealing with the bolded relatively in order:
The PS3 ISN'T relatively or significantly outperforming the Xbox 360. Coming off a marketshare victory over Microsoft of around 50%, Sony is now outselling the Xbox 360 by a few tens of thousands of units a week. We have also just seen that Sony has ZERO scope to drop the PS3's price anytime soon. The PS3 is suffering per unit losses anywhere between $80 and $160 from what we can glean from the latest quarterly financial report, and the first price drops were financed by bootlegging out features.
As I just said, the costs are nowhere near under control. Sony had to make a series of MASSIVE price cuts they never anticipated making. Furthermore, your ignoring the fact that the PS3 has none of the hallmarks of a victorious console like the PS, PS2 or Wii such as large sales, good pricing etc.....
The tech in the PS3 is already outdated. The latest PC games look considerably better than anything on any console. Whatever may happen on the PS3 or 360 in the future will again be beaten by whatever is happening on the PC in the future. It has already become completely clear that any tech advantage the PS3 has over the Xbox 360 in the real world will be negligible. Hell, the biggest multi-platform game of the generation from highly talented developers was technically inferior (lower resolution) on the PS3 (GTAIV).
Please don't try to imply Sony haven't been pushing the PS3 as hard as they possibly can. They have been hyping games YEARS in advance (Killzone 2 anyone) and PULLING OUT FEATURES that were previously described as "core" just to get price cuts out onto the market. This industry is all about momentum. If Sony didn't push the PS3 (Which is crap, because they have been) until a slimline was out in 2009/10, they would already have lost the fight. You should also bear in mind that the PS3 has none of the features that allowed the PS2 to have such an enormous tail, such as exclusive third party support, huge initial install bases/market share and a pricing advantage over the most comparable console.
As for quickly reducing the Xbox 360's headstart sales advantage, you realize that the lead is almost identical now compared to when the PS3 launched?
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