By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
HappySqurriel on 06 July 2008
Edit Thread
Gnizmo said:
HappySqurriel said:

Over 75% of home consoles in the previous generation were sold at $199 or less ...

It is possible that the acceptable price for the majority of consumers has increased but it is unlikley that it has passed $250. At the same time people are not (typically) willing to buy a "Gimped" system so the fully functional PS3 and XBox 360 have to approach this price before it becomes attractive to most users. At the rate they're going, it is unlikely that either system will hit that price before late 2009.

What this means is that the Wii will continue to be the dominant console for the masses, pass 50% marketshare (which will be a huge psychological barrier) and slowly steal third party support for the PS3 and XBox 360; and by the time they get to an acceptable price for most consumers the systems will be far less attractive.

 Well there was never a hefty amount of research done on that particular price point. The consoles that started at $300 last gen just dropped directly to $200. The mid-range is essentially un-explored territory and thus price drops into that range are a bit trickier to predict.

I agree, and I personally believe that how the market responds to a console that is priced in the middle ground is heavily dependant on the ecconomic conditions ...

Most people will agree that a console that is $150 or less is inexpensive and a console that is $400 or more is expensive (both in terms of the console market), and everything in between is much more questionable. If you're in a market where credit is easy to get, unemployment is low, house and stock values are rising ('Magically' creating wealth) and so on people are going to feel pretty comfortable spending money or luxuries and a $300 console is going to be seen as being fairly affordable; in contrast if you're seeing falling employment, difficult to access and expensive credit, falling home and stock prices, and rapidly growing inflation anything over $200 is going to be seen as very expensive.

Anyways, the core of my post was ...

The disparity in the quality and quantity of videogame releases for the HD consoles and the Wii will never be as large as it was in 2007 ever again; the disparity is much smaller in 2008, and in 2009 and beyond the disparity could reverse (so the Wii is on top) with how everything is going. Much like the difficulties faced by the N64, Dreamcast, Gamecube and XBox it is very difficult to sell even a $100 console which does not have a large and rapidly growing library of great games that the dominant console typically has ...

To put this an entirely different way ... Consumers in the videogame market is a lot like attractive single women; they are not going to wait around for you to get into shape and to get your life together before they make their decision, you have a very limited time to sell yourself to them (warts and all) before they're taken.