Well, if I read these statemments I can only scratch my head about the analysts.

IMHO the miss several critical points and simply ignore them:

First of all: A gaming console is sold primarily for games. If you have good games for it they will sell the plattform, if thze price is r4eachable for them.

Second the PS-3 is not only a gaming console but also a BluRay Player. But while this helps at the moment this influence will decrease with price drops of stand alone players. Its role as a BluRay player will probably not sell the PS-3 much longer than one or two years. Then it will have to stand as a pure gaming console.

And there is the problem. The PS-3 has to live and find its place with games. But for the game producers there is only one calculation: How many games can I sell for what price and how much does the development cost.

And there is the problem of the PS-3. While its architecture offers in theory a significant advantage compared to the Xbox 360 its architecture makes it much more complicated to release this power. It is even a quite expensive challenge to release so much power as the Xbox 360 offers.Its an even bigger challenge if you want to use higher level functions, which is necessary to hold the development costs in check on the bigger plattforms.

The Xbox 360 on the other hand has a quite significant advantage; its architecture contains a simple triple core. If you find a good solution for the Xbox 360 it will work on a PC quite as good. They can share parts of their development costs, especially if you use Nicrosoft SDKs. The Wii on the other hand is less complicated. Even a small (and therefore cheap) team can make a sigbificant game on this plattform.

And now look at the market shares of the plattforms. If you consider their costs the current situation looks quite bad for developers, that targeted mainly the PS-3 The best course of action might be to delay the release (in the hope that there will be more PS-3s sold, or go the multi plattform way. It is cheaaper to develop for the other plattforms. While the PS-3 sold more consoles in Japan than the Xbox 360, its attachement rate is quite bad. It simply doesn't pay to write PS-3 games for the japanese market only at the moment. At the moment the most decent approach might be to simpüly wait and watch how the PS-3 will cope. But there is a considerable danger for the PS-3: The more companies choose this approach the less games for the PS-3  are there, and the less attractive the PS-3 will look. Even if they lower their price, they can be sure that the Xbox 360 will reply in the same style, but Microsoft doesn't have to face such losses per console. If they don't have games that sell the PS-3 in significant numbers at the lower price, the PS-3 will be in serious trouble because more and more developers would drop the PS-3 support.

The Wii had buzz, brand, price and representation by most of the major Nintendo franchises in the first six months. Using the above forecasting model matrix the Wii was almost destined to win the first few months by default. However, the matrix is always changing.

Hahaha, yeah, Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros Brawl, Metroid Prime 3, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Pikmin for Wii were awesome, can`t believe they all got release 6 months after launch.

Seriously, those guys are real idiots. Listen to Gametrailers Bonus Round, Patchers attitude show those bastards can`t be trusted.

You know, i keep yammering on about how the PS3 will flop as currrent trend show it that wway, but I forgot on thing. Microsoft does horrable in Japan >.<. But, it still makes me wonder if Sony can pull a 2nd. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't PS3 sales coninuously going down? If so, this means that hioliday sales could be hammpered and that Sony contuously loses it's oprotunity as 360 sales would stay average while PS3 sales go down.

Of course, I like your numbers Source. I see the Wii doing a bit better, but that's probobly how it will end.

PS3 sales constantly go down, but the are bottoming out. It's held steady at 20k/wk in the US, and is around the same in Europe/Others. Japan? It's unsure of right now. It seems though, that the PS3 bottomed out around 8,500 units, but has gone up a bit since then (but no one knows if it'll plummet past the 8.5k mark).

What matters is the game release schedule for Sony in Japan. It'll do well in the US/EUR regardless. However, with a major title like MGS4, it could do quite well. Not Wii-levels, but it could pull ~750k in 2 months or so in Japan.

I have PS3 finishing between Saturn LTD & PSP (final ~ 2012) LTD numbers in Japan..

 

mrstickball said: PS3 sales constantly go down, but the are bottoming out. It's held steady at 20k/wk in the US, and is around the same in Europe/Others. Japan? It's unsure of right now. It seems though, that the PS3 bottomed out around 8,500 units, but has gone up a bit since then (but no one knows if it'll plummet past the 8.5k mark). What matters is the game release schedule for Sony in Japan. It'll do well in the US/EUR regardless. However, with a major title like MGS4, it could do quite well. Not Wii-levels, but it could pull ~750k in 2 months or so in Japan.

True true. One question is just how many untis will these games push. MGS4 and FF13 could both sell well, but they may just sell to the people who already own the console anyway.

I only read until "Sony has historically been slow out of the gates with their video game hardware systems, but their slow and steady pace has served them well in the long term."

How can these guys predict the future when they don't even understand the past?

One of the things that I don't understand is why some analysis believe that just because the PS3 is more expensive and can have larger price drops later in life, that it will out sell the other consoles that can only do smaller price drops.

I beilve that in the end the magic console price is $99USD. This is the point at which a console will become almost an impalse buy. (as long as it has decent games) And the Wii is the most likely to reach that point. The 360 has a slim chance of reaching that price. And I don't believe the PS3 will ever be able to reach that price.

Mrstickball wrote:
The big issue with everyone bashing the analyists:

You are no better. Everyone assumes that since the Wii is in the lead (and by everyone, 90% of people here think the Wii will have a 2:1 lead over the next system, or 1:1 with the PS3/360 combined). Everyone bashes the analyists, but you are doing the same thing. What are you doing only using arguments based on past systems to pidgenhole the future.

 

Well, you have to look at the past to predict the future. The issue is what you look at.

Most analysts put too much faith in brand. Companies fail, brands fail, industries fail, markets disappear. A good business plan is universal.

Good analysts realized by E3 last year that Wii was following in the footsteps of PONG, Atari 2600, NES, Game Boy, PS1 and DS. There's a 35 year history of products like Wii, which cut cost to developers and/or price to consumers and increased appeal to developers and consumers at the same time. There is a big difference between analyzing the specifics of the business plans behind all these products and finding the common themes, and simply picking a console to win based on 10 years of brand dominance. Its the difference between the good analysts who picked Wii to win without seeing ANY sales data, and the analysts who persist to come up with reasons the PS3 might recover.

Sean Malstrom, in his article "Why Wii Won," published Nov 20, 2006.

“How can the seventh generation be over already?” you ask. “Are you not jinxing it? We must witness sales performance before we declare a winner.”

Oh, you need to stop thinking about the machines and more about the business strategies involved. Sales performance is merely a reflection, a type of ‘lag’ that appears as the business strategies undergo their thing. Around 80% of a console’s success is dependent before that console is even launched.

http://thewiikly.zogdog.com/article.php?article=89&ed=10

Like it or not, there were people outlining exactly why the Wii won before it was even launched. The fact that both those people and pro analysts were looking at the past to make their predictions does not put them in the same boat. The people who's predictions are being confirmed by the sales data did a good job; those way off base did a bad job.

Some people picked Wii for the wrong reasons, to be sure, but just like the people picking PS3 to win, they are usually looking at companies, brands and the boxes themselves, not the business plans behind them, and that's something pretty easy to pick out.

You know, I just dont feel MS get the respect they deserve in these articles.

Blah

I had written alot more on this but Ill edit and erase it. Point is, it doesn't seem like any of these analyst ever give MS a fair shake. I think Wii is going to win this, but I don't think its set in stone. I still think theres a chance for all 3 to win. We all have no idea if one of these companies has a "Nintendogs" and "Brain Training" waiting to just explode onto the market and propel them to the top of the world like what happened with the DS (which was only doing mediocre before those games if you remember).

I have seen analyst say Wii may win. That PS3 could come back and win. But noone even seems to want to entertain the idea of MS winning. I know they aren't doing well in Japan, but are we supposed to ignore that they are currently doing well enough everywhere else to cancel out their Japanese performance? (Only in regards to the PS3 of course.)

I don't know, I just don't like the way they seem to just get left out of the "it could happen" scenarios.

[Lol I erased like 3 paragraphs and still ended up typing another ~2 anyway]