I didn't change my mind... I said and repeat the PS3 sales in UK are bad, weak... for me it's the weak region for PS3 in Europe... PS3 needs improve there and become strong.

I rarely comment on threads but this one had me pretty exasperated.

Ethomaz hasn't really changed what he was trying to say - he has only changed how he has gone about saying it.  I find it hard to believe that those commenters who took him to task didn't really have a grasp of the message he was trying to convey.

Kowenicki - earlier in this thread you acknowledged the imperfect medium that text-only communication presents, yet up until the above post you seemed unwilling to take this into account in your assessment of what Ethomaz had to say.

On the other hand I completely agree with your assessment of our 'business analyst' - a market is not defined by the population of a country but by the consumers that are interested in the the products that you (and your competitors) have to offer.  This generation is pretty mature now so it's unrealistic to expect major changes in those markets - thus the UK can be expected to remain by far the biggest market in Europe even though it has a smaller population than France. Therefore the biggest opportunity for Sony is the UK's existing Xbox and Wii customers - Sony has itself identified Wii & Xbox owners as the target for this price cut.

I wonder if it's really asking too much of us all to try to understand what others are trying to say rather than trying to score points over one another.  As has already been said depending on how you interpret strongest/weakest/most important can make either side of this argument seem like the 'right' one.

On the other hand perhaps winding each other up is all that's left in a market with few surprises left up its sleeve!

Somehow that rest of Europe still outsells UK. And that's despite not so small scale of inter-EU exports from UK to other countries.

yeah cool story bro but great that you, a market analyst doesn't think about the market in itself. you just compare the sold units compared to the population but you don't count how strong the market is for all companies of this industry.

sure it's better for sony to sell 5 million than 2 million consoles but that doesn't change the fact that in the uk there are a lot more gamers and if you sell there 6 million and if you sell 8 million in let's say germany you did fail in gb. sure percentage wise it's the same and you "only" sold 2 million less but the market is much bigger which mean you should sell much more in gb than in germany because germans don't play as much as the brits.

so if they woukld sell 8 million in germany and 6 million in gb that would mean for example that the just sold 500k less than the maximum in germany but they failed to sell like 5 million consoles in the uk market which means that they failed to get a billion of revenue.

they make a lot of money in the uk but just half of what they could. in other countries with less sells they couldn't sell much mor so they are "weak" in the uk even if they make more money there. do you think theire shareholders will say:

"great job sony you sold so many consoles in uk we are so happy. many more than in germany great work and even with a lower population wow!!"

no, they will say:

"wtf sony? you sold only 50% more consoles in uk than in germany even with a 300% bigger market for this industry"

a real analyst would say it's a big problem and you say it's a good market for sony lol. yes it's a good market but no even close to what it should be.

what if i feel both are right.... becuase they are, as i have said many times its all relative. and this whole thing was much ado about nothing.

It didnt sell that much because before price cut it already was selling at 199 in must places. But in next few weeks the price should drop to 160-170 then we will see real increase in sales. Its already at 175 in Amazon.Co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Playstation3-160GB-Slim-Console/dp/B005EL3ACK/ref=zg_bs_videogames_26

Your right on the fact that companies are not all nationally programmed, my previous post was a generalisation. But the other point is wrong, many business are started and handle not for the sole purpose of doing money. There is heads up with ideals, many actually. I could just use my boss as example, sometime he take costly decision because it helps the local population. Its a very successful business too, its possible to make money as well as respect your ideals. But we see less and less of that in america compare to german or japanese as example. That was my point. Like I said, I dont agree with the holier then thou either, but to say there is no general differences in the way company are handle by country is wrong. Also wrong is saying all heads up only care about money, specifically when we are talking about product design and R&D.

P.S.: Microsoft isnt a company I know very well, im not making any kind of judgment about its specific case.

Correct!  Strong/Weak or whatever can only be judged based on specified criteria.  UK is Sony's best market in Europe in terms of sales volume but is Sony's weakest marketing in Europe in terms of competitive ranking, for example.  Too many people seem to be comparing apples to oranges in this thread by arguing based on their chosen criteria against other's chosen criteria.

As for the sales life, 65% for the price change, time of year and complete lack of any new SW is pretty good.  The baseline sales should settle higher and holiday and demand around big releases will be up as well.

While they have lower volume sales the combined effect over EMEAA should be pretty decent and percentage wise might well be better than 65% in some territories.

I'd imagine Sony will be happy enough with this result.  At the same time I doubt it will make MS feel they have to knee-jerk response and I'm sure they'll wait for a while now to see where the baseline settles and how things look going forward before even considering a price cut themselves.

Its not about the fact that the rest of a region  outsells  the UK as a whole it is about the UK being the biggest single market in a very fragmented market  and Sony is no longer dominating the UK market as it once did ,just as the rest of the world beats NA, the fragmentation of those means the NA market is seen as the driver and so is the UK in EU because it is seen as the least fragmented market in Europe and historicaly the centre of EU video gaming.