Two problems are familiar to anyone following the console wars of gen 7 when it comes to the HD twins:

The PS3 was overpriced for the market.

The Xbox 360 was unreliable HW-wise.

To fix their problems, on August 18th 2009, Sony dropped the US retail price to 299$ for the PS3 and revealed the PS3 slim for a september release. Here are the results:

PS3 All-time

Zoom

Similarly, on June 18th 2010, MS launched their remodel S in the states. Here are the results:

While the trends were originally following a traditional bell curve, they drastically changed for a large boost after the decisions were realized.

These end gen anomalies show two things.

1) That there was pent up demand in these two platforms, and that the pricecuts and remodels were sought by the market.

2) That launching a remodel mid-way through a gen could lead to healthy revival, due to a secondary launch where all the mid-gen games are being released.

3) That a good business decision can gravely impact and trace the course of a console generation.

Cheers.

fanified the title in hopes to stir some discussion.

Follow-up question. Now that we have the all-time trends, are you surprised as to the effects of these moves over the lifetimes sales curves?

not really sure what to discuss... your OP just states some facts... did you have something specific to discuss about the trends?

Well, now that we have the lifetime curves, it's pretty impressive just how impactful those moves were. For example, in most other gens before this one, the trends went up then down. Here, the trends go up, then down, then boom.

It's just a defiance to the conventional thinking in video game sales analysis, which usually follow a bell curve.

yes, but you pointed it out in the OP... so I don't exactly know what you want to discuss here.  A bunch of people saying, hey, that is interesting?  Generally, a discussion would have multiple points and sides to discuss and positions to take and what not...

Haha, okay but I was expecting people to bring in some new thoughts. It's a forum after all.

Maybe it's just a bland topic, so I guess I'll be okay to let it die. It's just strange on a sales site that talking sales curves of the past gets little attention. I've noticed that yeah. But I'm ok with it.

It has been talked about a lot over the years though.  It is always more interesting to discuss future sales trends than already existing sales trends.  Thats why we have so many threads about the new consoles right now...

Yeah, I know. I once made a huge analysis thread of past sales, I got a few interested posters which was cool, but typically discussing the past doesn't create a lot of discussion.

I know it's been discussed a lot in the past for the immediate result, but I thought it was quite astounding the lasting effect it had on the respective businesses (Sony's and MS'). It wasn't just a single bump, they actually amplified the remaining curve.

it was definitely a good generation for experimentation on console sales and market trends.  Of course, this last generation was unique for a lot of different reasons that made consoles sales hard to predict.  

My question is whether remodelling by itself has much effect? I don't think so. With PS3 the price cut was the big thing. I would argue that a remodel by itself would have done almost nothing for 360 after a short effect. What "relaunched" 360 was Kinect, which I hypothesise was a substantial number of people dropping Wii and picking up 360+Kinect 4GB bundles. The Kinect launch was effectively a price cut because Kinect bundles could be had for not that much more than straight 360 before Kinect's launch.

So expensive but popular brand becomes cheaper. And cool new toy. These are the seeds of the revivial, not so much remodelling.