My prediction that I made a while ago, that the Xbox360 will outsell the PS3 overall from q3-q4 goes live from next week. With the gap as of this week sitting at 30k I feel much more confident going in now than I did back then when the gap was more like 40-50k per week.

My other predictions.

The Xbox360 premium $300 - Pretty much check on this one.

The Xbox360 will recieve wireless support with the Jasper refresh.

The Xbox360 premium will get a HDD increase from 20 - 60gb with the Jasper refresh.

The Xbox360 Elite will get Blu ray probably if it does it will be a Jasper model.

The Xbox360 Arcade will be getting motion controls, before the end of the year.

So there we have it, 1 main prediction and 5 supporting predictions.

Im not going to go into the reasons but every prediction I made at least seems to me to be sound business moves for Microsoft. I've held these views for over 6 months so it isn't a last minute thing for me to say this.

Yeah I am surprised at PS3 hardware sales. Not as good as I was thinking they were going to be from all the posts on these forums.

Well, all I can say is that most of those predicitons are batshit insane, and I don't see how 360 will gain 30k in sales a week until Microsoft officially announces a price drop across all 360 models.

Actually the predictions arent that bad.

-Price reduction will help the xbox outsell PS3, but if it doesnt it will come very close.

-$300 price point --Check

- wireless, I agree, or at least it would be a good move.

- HDD, i dont know, they already have the elite, could still happen

- Bluray. Im not sure on this, i would disagree. Its too late and would remove their price advantage

- Motion controls. Quite Possibily especially if they want to target the wii market.

Well the Xbox360 price cut is coming sooner than I had anticipated, and the hardware gap is also much smaller than I had anticipated. Its funny actually, I keep expecting that the sales of the Xbox360 will top 200k per week in the U.S between the holiday season and the start of Q4. If you look at last years results the Xbox360 averaged 140k for that period, so 200k should definately be achieveable if a 30-40% year on year boost is factored in.

I'm going to disagree with you on

the 360 outselling the PS3
Blu Ray - I doubt the 360 will ever have it
Motion Controls - I doubt the 360 will have it, and even if it did, they wouldn't bundle the Newton with the arcade.

The other 3 I think are perfectly reasonable bets

As far as motion controlls...technically all they need is few casually designed games to take off with motion controlls like wii sports and then some big titles to support them as well (like banjo and halo wars) where the controlls fit and they can pull it off.

Last thing I want is for GTA4 and Gears 2 to be motion controlls... Tennis and baseball however, for sure.

Rest of your predictions are fine. Bluray wont happen though. Microsoft doesn't need bluray to compete with ps3 in NA and in Europe and Japan they could give it away for free, PS3 will still sell more.

Actually I may as well explain my reasoning for the Wireless, Blu ray, HDD increase.

Microsoft makes money when people make use of their profitable online services. If people go online on gold they earn $50 per year revenue in addition to whatever they earn from the other services they use on Live as well. Wireless is simply to encourage people to go online and use the media centre features and to make sure that the people who need wireless don't go looking elsewhere for their console purchase.

The Hard Disk drive is 20gb - but it only leaves about 10gb of free space after formatting etc. So that means that it acts as a limiter for people to purchase online content because there simply is not enough space on the hard drive. An increase to 60gb will give the console between 4-5 times the free space it has currently so they can expand their media offerings and therefore the profitability from their movie/game downloads. Furthermore it does help to make the console look more impressive than the PS3, go figure I know. But I worked in retail and literally 20% of the potential buyers I estimate will be impressed by the fact that its a bigger number than 40.

The reasoning for the blu ray in the Elite is simply because it is the Media centre SKU. It has a larger HDD specifically for use as a media centre. This SKU suffers from an identity crisis. Its existance is hard to justify at present and even harder to justify if the HDD on the Premium SKU is increased. The target market for a media centre overlaps heavily with those people who would also appreciate blu ray so for those people it makes sense to give them what they want in one package. A complete media centre.

Now the expenses. Wireless would cost very little to add, and the potential profit from those who go online because of it would probably cancel the added cost out anyway. At most I would say it would cost $5 to add wireless. My best guess is about $3 each in quantities above 1 million consoles. It requires a motherboard revision so this is the only chance for another year for them to add wireless to their consoles. .

For the HDD, I checked a price search engine and discovered that the price for a 20gb HDD is the same price as an 80gb HDD. Its quite possible that a HDD size increase would cost no more than $5 and even that would drift back down to 0 as the costs decreased over time. It makes sense from a profit/cost perspective for them from their live services to make this change.

For the Blu ray - The cheapest drive is $130 on Newegg for a retail drive. If the price of the Elite is maintained at $450, the console would be easily profitable with the drive installed and maintaining the same price. I would expect it would cost them less than $100 in quantities over 100,000 drives to buy them on the wholesale market. So long as the PS3 maintained its price in the US this SKU could easily return to the profitability it had previously as the price of the drive lowers over time.

 Its funny, it would be cool to do Halo 3 IMO with motion controls. Not with a "mote" but with a light gun/rifle instead.

Its funny though because I think GOW and GTA would both rock with motion controls. Since GTAIV suffers from bad hand to hand and kinda below average targeting. It would actually make sense to use something like the Wiimote in the game.

The Xbox360 doesn't need blu ray to compete with the PS3 the elite needs it to justify its very existance. Microsoft said they give people choices, and that doesn't preclude offering one of the choices as the Elite.

360 fans seem to be having a lot of fun here so I won't spoil their little party. You boys need any sandwiches or snacks for your little get-together?