well, there is a factor in the 360 reaching 50 million--

if Nintendo does cut the price on the Wii, it will KILL Kinect sales

so a Wii price cut would do two things: increase Wii hardware sales, AND destroy Kinect sales

I'm not saying that Nintendo will cut the price of the Wii.

I'm saying that if Nintendo did cut the price of the Wii, parents would see a $ 150 Wii versus a $ 300 KInect bundle.  Which one do you think they will buy?

Especially in this economy.

It would absolutely kill Kinect.

Personally, I think Nintendo would be dumb not to cut the price, and soon.

if wii price cut,i think 360 will follow it

I honestly think if Nintendo cut the Wii price, MS will monitor first 3 weeks of sale and if it's not as they'd hope, they'll cut for black friday.

Yes it was. The competition's strategies might also help enable or disable Microsoft's chance at 50 million.

Lookin' good kowenicki. Thanks for the ackowledgement.

It's off to a good start. I initially thought there was little chance of 360 exceeding Q4 2008. But now I think it might. It's just a question of whether it will exceed it by enough to get to 50 million.

I kinda want it to stay tight so that it comes down to the wire, that way it'll keep things interesting with people really anticipating each week's sales.

So the cumulative /- column needs to get to over 587K to make the 50 million.

In which case Sony will have little choice but to do the same. Though it means sacrificing profitability, Sony still need to balance profits and market share due to how this generation started for them and how it's played out up to now.

no, I think it just needs to be in the black as the plus is just excess.

Yeah, I dunno if Sony can afford to though. I know in a weird turn of fate they were the only ones to profit last Q, but there's more than meets the eye with that. Nintendo can afford to cut the price and profit, Microsoft most certainly can too. Sony .. I don't know if they can justify going into losses again for marketshare.

If Wii doesn't drop price, I see all 3 dropping price in September next year.

 I think if MS does a price drop, then yes. They should have done a price drop with the introduction of the Slim as Sony did. MS has the room to do a $50 price drop especially with cheaper costs. If there's no price drop I think it'll depend on whether Kinect fails or succeeds. 

Yeah, I think it would be a tight call for Sony, but if Wii AND 360 both dropped their price Sony's market share and sales momentum could suffer massively, which itself would be detrimental to profits. So the calculus for Sony would be will we lose more money by losing marketshare, or by cutting price and maintaining market share. Then there's the short term vs long term aspect, where cutting price has more of a long term benefit.

@ the cumulative thing (stupid plus sign not working, I keep forgetting), oh yes, I see that now.