I don't think PS3 will go much lower than 8k a week in Japan or 15k a week in NA. However, I also don't think it'll see more than double those numbers from any game that isn't MGS4 or FF13. In order to recover, the PS3 needs two of the following three things ASAP: MGS4, FF13, and a $200 price drop. The presence of new IPs is great and all but for all we know they could have the same effect as Motorstorm (which was massively hyped) did, which actually saw PS3 NA weekly sales fall in the month it came out.

Here's the thing. I like graphs and here's one http://www.vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=America&cons2=PS3&reg2=Japan&cons3=PS3&reg3=UK&weekly=1 Apart from spikes, the PS3 weekly sales are trending down, though certainly not fast. Which suggests they are going, um, down. This graph also shows UK sales of PS3 matching Japan, which is amazing.

On killer games -

 Let us remember exactly why Sony was where it was last generation. The head start helped, as did the DVD playback (though DVD players were already down to $100 by the time the XB and GCN were released), but Sony outright bullshitted their PR into the stratosphere, preemptively destroying the DreamCast before there were more than 2 decent games on the PS2. The killer, though, came in that fall of 2001, when the Box and Cube were launched. Sony DID have the hottest title - GTA3**, while MS went with Halo and Nintendo with *ahem* Luigi's Mansion. But what really helped them bury the needle was GT3, MGS2, FF10, Devil May Cry, and a number of other very solid games, all launching within a few months of each other. Simply put, the PS2 didn't just have a killer app - it grew a fantastic library almost overnight, allowing it to leave the competition in the dust.

 I don't see anything like this on the horizon for the PS3 (or the other systems for that matter), and the number of people who will drop 5-6 bills for a game or two is, I suspect, rather small. So I really don't see Sony reversing its fortunes any time soon.

** (for the record - GTA1 and 2 were never huge hits, so the killer app can often be a suprise)

F*cking Double Post!

probably never...

It's not that Sony wants to drop the price of the PS3 or anything. It would definitely make their losses soar to truly insane amount, but they simply have to do something soon to save their console.

The question now is if Sony will be willing to take even huger losses for people to buy their console, and how long the really high-ups in charge of the entire corporation feel like keeping the Playstation corpse on extremely expensive life-support. There are definitely people even now in Sony who want to get rid of it, and by every week of abysmal sales more and more people are going to agree with them.

They simply have to maintain profitability. Stringer has already promised a 5% profit margin average for all of Sony. There is no way for him to keep that promise if the gaming division bleeds another $2 billion.

Right, but as has been mentioned before, pulling off profitability is harder with Sony's particular marketing strategy.

Selling the system at a loss works great, as long as you actually do go on to be the market leader. If you do not become market leader, then you don't get overwhelming 3rd party support, which is where Sony made its money last generation. So what happens when a console sells at a loss and still ends up marginalized? To find the answer, one only need look at the original Xbox: you lose billions of dollars.