I think you misread my statement (or I didn't clarify it very well). I meant to state that the odd 3rd party push for the 2nd/3rd placed systems caused them to grow as the pricing became within reach of most people. My emphasis was on the 3rd party software not the pricing.

The only reason PS360 get almost no exclusives from 3rd parties as they are all ported to both is because the combined market for these two is greater than the Wii and justifies the inceased costs in developing HD games.

Had Wii been within the same power area of the PS360 as PS2 was to Xbox, then the 3rd parties would have stuck with porting to 3 consoles at first until Wii pulled into the 60% marketshare area where it would have been more cost effective to make Wii exclusive games vs built on Wii and ported to PS360. But, Wii could never push greater than 50% of the market on casuals and Nintendo IPs alone. It need some form of a core push as well. 3rd parties didn't allow that to happen as they knew core owners also wanted the tech in the PS360.

Next gen when all three are much closer in terms of power, this will happen. Initially all three will get the same games, mostly, but over time whomever is pulling a large lead will begin to grab the primary dev time and eventually a lot of exclusives which will only propell their market share dominance.

PS3 last year had a slim model AND price cut that allowed it to raise and sustain a higher sell through rate.

360 had a slim model in March. If there is no price cut in these remaining months, it will begin to drop in sustained sales and while increasing in YOY it won't match PS3's sustained levels.

If 360 does get a price cut, it will have an even larger increase, however, PS3 will undoubtly match the price and therefore simply match the increase.

Plus, looking at the future game lineup and only looking at exclusives, I see GT5 being the bigger console pusher of anything these two are putting out, so PS3 will have a larger demand, imo.

eh, your right, I need to be better and rereading my posts to make sure they specify what I intend to really mean.

Do you agree with my last post as it more clearly represents my opinion.

I'm glad you put imo because I really have a hard time agreeing with any of that.  What slim model did 360 have in March?

The 360 doesn't need a price cut to sustain levels.  That has been made apparent over the last 2 months now.  Going into the holiday with the momentum behind it, the sales will increase in proportion to how they have in the past, meaning the sales will be higher than even 2008 levels (360's top year so far).  Also, with the overwhelming demand and hype building for Kinect amongst casuals, I think it is safe to say that will be a strong hardware driver for this holiday, far stronger than PS Move will be for the PS3.

If the 360 does cut price, which it likely won't now that sales have shown not to need one, the PS3 would be very VERY unlikely to match the price.  They still aren't making profit in that division, do you think Sony will want to take another $50 loss per machine again after just becoming profitable on hardware?  They didn't match price in 2008 when the 360 took off and I don't see any reason why/how they could this time.

All in all, Reach, Gears 3, Fable 3, and Kinect will be plenty to drive demand for the 360, far far greater than Move GT5 for the PS3 imo.

Ah very true.. I forgot there was a difference between Wii gamers and gamers.

Actually there will be a PS3 price cut in Europe this year. Sony have just discovered an ingenious way to implement it. They'll ride the wave from clearance priced 120s and 250s while selling the 160s, most likely at a pretty comfortable margin, and then when the 320 Move bundle comes out they'll cut the price of the 160s, probably to €275. They'd have to be crazy to keep the 160s at €300 when the 320 with PSEye, Move, and Sports Champions only retails for €50 more. So I'd say 15 million is relatively likely.

Sorry, March was wrong, meant with E3 in June. My fault.

I think you are overestimating the number of people buying the 360 now. Its been  a lot of those grabbing up the cheaper old models as well as people replacing their models. I'd bet when the next quarterly reports come out and if MS discusses the number of new unique XBLive accounts you'll realize there is no significant jump.

Sony is profitable on the PS3 now and has been for months. They could match any price cut MS would do at this point and remain profitable. I also don't think either company will however, I don't think it is impossible. If it weren't for the staggered launch of the xbox slim models and the subsequent clearance of old stock, xbox numbers would have already fallen to or below PS3 levels.

This will be self evident in September.

In June the 360 managed 670k units. Given the launch was in the last half of June and it happened later outside of NA, July is where the real full effect can be seen. July sold 980k units. However, with 1/2 of August over its only at 425k units and is declining every week. So, by end of month (August) 360 will be at less than 800k. By end september it will be down to less than 500k easily and therefore below PS3. This is assuming no pricecut before end of September of course.

I think something to consider here is that Nintendo planned on having a 5 year life span which has been typical every generation up until now.   Wii will easily be selling for another 3-4 years at some level but likely a new system will be out holidays 11 or 12.     Nintendo never came out and said that but it's obvious.  When Wii launched HD wasn't in a majority of homes but even in '05 they would have assumed HD would be the majority by '10.   It didn't concern them (much) because they figured they'd need a new system by then anyway.

Considering Nintendo profitted from day 1 with Wii, there's absolutely no shame or loss in bring out a new system next year.

MS and especially Sony can't say the same.  They need a 10 year cycle and so do most 3rd parties.

Nintendo isn't in any kind of problem here.  Wii is still selling well and they are profitting nicely (although currency exchange isn't making it look good currently).  

Conversely a new Console from Wii which the same impact of Wii or 3DS in 2011 could devastate Sony and hurt MS margins.   Frankly, Sony and MS would rather see Wii having flat sales so it stays in the market for 10 years than continually dropping.

Not sure if this was mentioned, but 2007 Wii numbers were also lower because of shortages all year long was it not?

Wii looks on target to sell 18 mil for FY 2011 and outsell PS3/360 individually for calender year 2010. If it happens, it will be off the peak by almost 25%. At the same time, it could still outsell its closest competitor by 20%. Can we start worrying when either HD console outsells Wii for the full year?