360 sales will imporve with price drops and games but the fact is sony has a lot of big names titles dropping next year. if they are all on time expect the ps3 to have a huge boost. ps3 will be 349 or 299 (40 gig) by may so everyone will have further prices drop except nintendo. 250 bucks is a good price point and thats what sont and microsoft want so bad.

Jandre02 said: They are turning profit in the gaming department (think Halo 3, XBL) but I doubt their console is profitable. They can't drop each console $100, which is the only price drop I would deem significant. They will drop the Premium to 250-299, eliminate the core, and drop the elite to 350-399. I highly doubt that it costs them less than $300 to make each Xbox360. They won't drop too far below the Wii, which won't have a price drop for a long time. That will make it seem like the Wii is worth more than the 360. They may add games or controllers, but they won't drop the price of the core.

http://www.game-machines.com/article/2006-11-27/360-breakeven

Thats a article from more then a year ago and they mention they are breaking even

Now that doesnt include a 50 dollar price cut but im sure MS was able to lower the price of it by more then 50 bucks. Also that doesnt include the other skus.......

luckduck said: TurdFergusonMcGee said: ^^ Sorry, had to say that. But in reality i like 360 a lot and i hope it does well, and I hope PS3 does very well. I really hope people stop buying wii once they get tired of the abysmal game selection. your just writting off the wii right now and that isn't fair either. People seem to forget that it is only the wii's first year, so there are plenty of great games to come.

Yeah probably, I just dislike the Wii. But its also the PS3's first year and its library expanded more than the Wii's. The Wii's Million Sellers:

	Wii Sports	Nintendo	2.48	7.45	5.85	15.78
	Wii Play	Nintendo	2.01	3.56	2.21	7.78
	The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess	Nintendo	0.56	2.17	1.45	4.18
	Mario Party 8	Nintendo	1.06	1.70	0.86	3.62
	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo	0.70	1.58	1.03	3.31
	Wario Ware: Smooth Moves	Nintendo	0.61	0.80	0.65	2.06
	Super Paper Mario	Nintendo	0.53	0.88	0.49	1.90
	Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games	Sega	0.32	0.55	0.94	1.81
	Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree	Nintendo	0.30	0.37	0.83	1.50
	Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition	Capcom	0.14	0.58	0.50	1.22
	Rayman Raving Rabbids	Ubisoft	0.02	0.67	0.48	1.17
	Mario Strikers Charged	Nintendo	0.13	0.45	0.47	1.05
	Red Steel	Ubisoft	0.04	0.45	0.54	1.03
	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock	RedOctane	0.00	0.88	0.13	1.01

 

Out of the 14 million sellers, 5 are Mario + a Wario game which is a character from mario (correct me if i'm wrong about wario) so that means 6/14 are Mario type.  GH3 and RE4 are out for the other platforms. Zelda and Big Brain are remakes (big brain was DS). This means Red Steel, Raymen Raving Rabbids,  and Wii Sports/Play are their only real original IP's.

I know you could easily take a look at PS3's million sellers and say theres only 4, 2 of which are multi platform. But the other 2 are new IP's and also theres quite a few games that are near a million. Also wii has over 10 million more which certainly helps. PS3 also has some games that will most likely/might reach a million at some point that are original IP's such as Heavenly Sword Uncharted, & Warhawk. As well Haze looks promising (if it ever f-ing comes out)

@ king_of_the_catle

LOL

And everyone knows if a game isn't an original IP, it MUST be bad right? Right?!

No one is saying that the 360's sales are going to plummet, just that they are fixed and will stagnate next year, which is very likely.

I've said most of this before, but I'll say it again:

Games like Alan Wake, Too Human, Fable 2, Halo Wars, Banjo-Kazooie, Ninja Gaiden 2, etc are not proven system sellers, and some aren't even proven IPs, which means that they could end up selling over 1M copies, but they'll have sold to the userbase ala Lost Planet, GRAW2, Forza 2, Bioshock, or they could end as dissapointments or even up flopping outright, and saying that they are going to cause tremendous hardware boosts is no different from people saying the same thing about Motorstorm, Lair, Warhawk, Heavenly Sword, R&C, in regards to the PS3 . There's GTAIV, but it's also on the PS3, and it really isn't a proven hardware mover because GTA3 and GTA:VC were released on a system that was selling extremely well without it. It was the PS2 that moved these titles, not the other way around. It had Halo, its strongest title by far release this year, and it will still have sold only about 8 million units by years end and only about 1.5m more than the previous year, so I really don't see how any of the aforementioned titles are going to make things any different.

Even if the 360 sees a price cut, it will most likely be by another lousy 50 bucks, and $300 is a lot of money to pay for a console that's in its third year, especially since it will still be above mass market price point.

By and by, the 360's most prolific titles are indeed shooters, racing/driving sims, and sports titles, and these only appeal to the core gamer and the hardcore gamer and the first and third have almost no appeal outside of NA.

That being said, how are 360 sales going to increase significantly when most of the advantages it had in 2007 will be nullified or greatly mitigated(especially software) in 2008, when it is still above mass market price-point, and when it still only appeals to the core and hardcore gamer and is the least desired console outside of N. America?

thx1138 said: SlorgNet said: 1. 360 Hard disk is more joe consumer friendly to replace than PS3. Sure the PS3 HD can be replaced, but if it was so easy to put any HDD in then the best thing Sony could have done was not have all these SKU's. Just offer a SKU without HDD, but make purchasing 1 mandatory. Then people could choose any off the shelf HDD.

 

360 HDD's are horribly overpriced right now. 20 Gb HDD costs around 100€ while 120 Gb costs 150-200€. With the price of the 20 Gb HDD I could find external 500 Gb HDD for my PC. PS3 uses standard HDD's which are a lot cheaper and you also have more options.

TurdFergusonMcGee said: luckduck said: TurdFergusonMcGee said: ^^ Sorry, had to say that. But in reality i like 360 a lot and i hope it does well, and I hope PS3 does very well. I really hope people stop buying wii once they get tired of the abysmal game selection. your just writting off the wii right now and that isn't fair either. People seem to forget that it is only the wii's first year, so there are plenty of great games to come. Yeah probably, I just dislike the Wii. But its also the PS3's first year and its library expanded more than the Wii's. The Wii's Million Sellers:   Out of the 14 million sellers, 5 are Mario + a Wario game which is a character from mario (correct me if i'm wrong about wario) so that means 6/14 are Mario type. GH3 and RE4 are out for the other platforms. Zelda and Big Brain are remakes (big brain was DS). This means Red Steel, Raymen Raving Rabbids, and Wii Sports/Play are their only real original IP's. I know you could easily take a look at PS3's million sellers and say theres only 4, 2 of which are multi platform. But the other 2 are new IP's and also theres quite a few games that are near a million. Also wii has over 10 million more which certainly helps. PS3 also has some games that will most likely/might reach a million at some point that are original IP's such as Heavenly Sword Uncharted, & Warhawk. As well Haze looks promising (if it ever f-ing comes out)

Big Brain Academy is not a remake, it's a sequel. Zelda is not a remake either (although it is multiplatform). Most of those games have Mario in them, but none of them are alike.

If we go through the genres in the Wii's million sellers we get:

5 party games, 2 sports games, 1 adventure game (2 soon when Metroid Prime 3 grabs a few more sales), 1 puzzle game, 1 platformer, 1 shooter, 1 action RPG, 1 music game, and 1 survival horror. The Wii's 14 million sellers cover 9 genres. Clearly party games currently sell very well, but considering the fastest selling Wii game is Mario Galaxy I don't think there is any concern about core game performance on the system.

If we go through the PS3's million sellers we get:

2 shooters, 1 racing game, and 1 action game. Not doing too bad at selling diverse genres. Of course it's sort of sad to see games like Ratchet & Clank do poorly, but it's certainly not doing horribly for an early system.

If we go through the 360's 29 million sellers we get:

12 shooters, 4 racing games, 4 action games, 4 sports games, 2 WRPGs, 2 music games, and 1 fighting game. in 29 million sellers the 360 covers 7 genres, and favors shooters even more than the Wii favors party games.

So if you want to talk about sales diversity the Wii sells a much wider range of genres than the PS3 and even manages to sell more genres than the 360 with half the million sellers. I don't think there is any concern at all about Wii library diversity from a sales standpoint. The PS3 and 360 on the other hand have yet to prove they can push many genres like platformers, JRPGs, adventure games and more. So I think before you criticize Wii game sales just because "Mario is in them" maybe you should take a look at what diverse genres those game sales represent.

Untamoi said: thx1138 said: SlorgNet said: 1. 360 Hard disk is more joe consumer friendly to replace than PS3. Sure the PS3 HD can be replaced, but if it was so easy to put any HDD in then the best thing Sony could have done was not have all these SKU's. Just offer a SKU without HDD, but make purchasing 1 mandatory. Then people could choose any off the shelf HDD.   360 HDD's are horribly overpriced right now. 20 Gb HDD costs around 100€ while 120 Gb costs 150-200€. With the price of the 20 Gb HDD I could find external 500 Gb HDD for my PC. PS3 uses standard HDD's which are a lot cheaper and you also have more options.

You dont understand my point. With the 360 Joe consumer (Someone that isnt interested in opening the console up to replace a HDD) the 360 is more consumer friendly. Im not talking about cost or flexibility I am talking what the average consumer would want to do.

iberz said: Why is it that everyone these day's seems to think the 360 has just run out of steam and will collapse next year. Everyone has the 360 finishing last on their prediction's. Most people seem to forget that after 2 years Microsoft has been able to sustain the 360's price quite remarkably. Honestly I think the 360 will have a much better year in 2008. 1. The new 360's reliability is excellent in comparison to the old motherboards. 2. Microsoft will probably drop it's price next year quite significantly 3. Believe it or not Microsft has some great games coming out next year, Splinter Cell Conviction, Ninja Gaiden2, Fable 2, Killer Instinct 3, Dark Messiah, Too Human etc. Also don't forget, 360 software sales mean 3rd parties are loving Microsoft right now. I'm not saying here the 360 will have record-breaking sales and outsell the Wii and PS3 together but stop making silly assumptions like the PS3 overtaking the 360 in 2008 or early 2009 because it just isn't going to happen.

 

1. I know many gamers who were unaware of the RROD, and even fewer who know of the new Falcon chipset (the members of these boards are an atypical sample).

2. We said the same thing in 2006, and a substantial cut never came. Until we know how much they cut, when they cut it, and what Sony does to match it, there's no way to know what the effect of a cut will be. I would say they should drop by at least $75 within 30 days of GTA4 launching, and that Sony has already cut to the bone in 2007, so it is unlikely to match until next November, but that's just guesswork on my part.

3. Every console is expecting great games this year, but until the games actually arrive, no one knows how good they will be, or if they will impact sales. Certainly no one anticipated GTA3 being such a prime mover for the PS2, nor did anyone anticipate such a luke warm reception for Metroid Prime 3 last year. And who would have expected titles such as Nintendogs and Brain Age to sport the sort of legs that they have?

In my predictions post, I expected a good year for all the systems, but a slightly better one for PS3 than 360. Why?

First, the 360 could shave $200 off it's price and still not be able to sell consoles in Japan, while Sony has a prove record in all 3 markets. Even if MS pulls away a bit in US and EU, I suspect it will not be enough to overcome the Asian differential.

Secondly, if my math is right, there were roughly 165 million consoles sold last gen, and only 45 million this. Granted that many of those were replacements of failed consoles, but we can also expect the market to grow this gen as well. So we can safely assume that there's at least another 120million consoles to be sold this generation. So the question is, who will buy them?

Though I have no direct data to back this up, I am assuming that many XBOx and GameCube owners have made the jump. Why?

1. MS dropped support of the XB almost 3 years ago. There's been no reason for them to hang on. When you consider the strong sales of Halo3, it is clear many fans of that franchise have already upgraded, meaning a large portion of 360 owners are former XB owners. This in turn means that relatively few XBox boosters remain among this gen's "undecideds".

2. The GameCube was arguably on life support longer than the original XBox. No matter how big a Nintendo fan one may be, it is hard to deny the system was a colossal disappointment from a marketing perspective. However, Nintendo fans are loyal, and are likely to stick with the Big N this gen (though many may also get a second console). As is, the Wii has nearly equaled GCN sales, and traditional Nintendo titles (ie anything Mario) have done great business. Add in the relatively low price of the Wii, and tendecies for bandwagon jumping, and odds are good a huge portion of the Nintendo crowd has also transitioned (if they could even find a Wii).

3. Even if we assume every single Wii and 360 sold went to former PS2 fans who have abandoned any hope of owning a PS3, that would still leave well over 70 million PS2 owners out there, more than half of whom never owned a GCN or XBox.

So, no matter how you slice it, a large number of those unsold consoles will end up being sold to people who have purchased Sony systems in the past, and only Sony systems last gen. It is not unreasonable to assume these people were happy with the PS2, and given the choice, many of them would choose to support the Sony name. The barrier to this of course remains the high price of the PS3 - most PS2 sales occured after they dropped below $200. However, neither the 360 nor the Wii have gone into that price range either (and the Wii, while closest to that mark, remains a bitch to find), so most of those current PS2 owners have little or no reason to commit to any of the three consoles right now, let alone a "rival" console for a company they have little familiarity with (if not outright hostility, as is often the case with MS; at least Nintendo has a long standing gaming rep behind them, and likely many PS2 owners have owned some form of Nintendo console in the past, even if it was a GameBoy)? Therefore, I suspect MS will likely have to take dramatic measures to lure these gamers away from Sony (which I would suggest being a steep price cut in concert with the release of GTA4.)