Feeling the pressure = getting outsold on every week. Just like the 360 before its recent cut.

They will totally drop the price if the PS3 starts hammering it again and they know it

The Xbox 360's price will be cut closer to five months from now rather than five years. There is no way they will go five years without lowering the price. At the very least, they will add extra stuff to it in order to keep new customers buying the system. The sales of the 360 have picked up with the most recent price drop and some great games coming out and that will push sales over the holiday season. Next year though will be different and they will add something to each model or some sort of extra incentive if not an actual price drop. I guarantee though that within a year and a half, two years at most, we will see a fifty dollar price drop on all three models if not more and if not sooner.

With the Wii essentially the same price as the average price of the two lower end models of the 360 but yet outselling by an enormous margin and the PS3 out there and will lower their price in the next year or so, Microsoft will have no choice whether they like it or not to lower their price. Unless they want to settle into a 3rd place position which I'm not sure they'll mind since no matter what they do from this point, it will have done better than the previous generation which is always a major goal and accomplishment in this era.

 Oh yeah lol?

     First off they are not my heaviest hitters i do not own Microsoft nor am i anyway incorporated with them. But the 5.57 million console lead that Microsoft has atm is the same as it was when the Ps3 first lanuched so they havent gained anything on Microsoft yet.

   On your other thing about heaviest hitters already all gone then what is gears of war 2? What is the rest of the Mass effect triliogy? Whats Halo Wars? What Halo reconn or what ever its called? Im pertty sure that Microsoft will have many "heaviest hitters" as you call them in the years to come.

1st off there will always be some Heavy Hitters in any giving for all systems. So Let's just throw that out of the argument. Secondly... Even I have to say to a point BS... It's possible that the PS3 goes up in sales. The 360 sees declines in sales... and really starts hurting... You now have to make a choice... Price Cut or Lose which are you going to choose?? I know it's a small possibility in some people's minds. (Maybe even not a possibility) But it's there. So yeah... BS.

Year... I met to say any given Year (Month etc.)

I actually think they will introduce a slim next year and phase out this model.

Just my thoughts on it.

 Yeah i think they will do this too

My thoughts on the 360s lifespan and profitability from another thread:

For both hardware and especially software, releasing an extra year earlier may ensure an extra year of profitable hardware and software sales.

Lets assume that the next generation of Xbox hardware is released in 2011, 3 years from now. The sales of both hardware and software aren't going to suddenly cease and desist unless the next Xbox takes the market by storm and catapaults to an ensured #1 position and even then its unlikely that more than 25% of the current userbase will step up to the next generation immediately.

By 2010/2011 the Xbox 360 is likely to be pulling at least $1.5 Billion a year in gross profit if you assume over 100 million software units sold per year @$7 each (console royalty) and the profit from Live, 1st party games, and hardware. This isn't going to cease and desist once the start of the next generation rolls around. New generations take time to ramp up and in this time the Xbox 360 will obviously continue to sell a reasonable number of consoles as the next generation ramps up. The target markets for a 6 year old console and a new console are completely different. This extra year could just about pay for the $1 Billion Xbox 360 RROD liability. Perhaps this is what the Xbox 360 executives meant when they said that they weren't so worried about the cost.

44% of the Xbox 360s sales were made in the last 12 months.

Current Software numbers: 151,068,009.

Software sold last 12 months: 95,231,611 or 63% of total.

Both the hardware and software numbers indicate a maturing platform. These numbers show that we are still in the middle of the hardware cycle for the Xbox 360 with potentially even bigger sales to come for both this time next year. Considering that there is a hardware refresh expected and the price cut from this year will carry through into next year with increased sales 2009/10 could be the peak year for the Xbox 360, the generation will be at full steam.

By 2009, the people who buy consoles will care even less about whats in the box in terms of relative capabilities than 2008 as both HD platforms will be completely obsolete anyway. "There abouts" is good enough for most people. The Xbox 360 will not decline based on any percieved or actual technical disparities with its competition and the Wii is a perfect testament to this. This is why the Arcade SKU exists in the first place. Its designed to be cheap to produce and cater to people who simply don't care about anything else.

So in the end, the extra year on the market will ensure extra profitability. The Arcade unit will be as cheap as chips and potentially broaden the market further by its ability to drop to astronomically low price levels if you consider the fixed costs of the HDD are absent and the DVD-Drive are low. The market will care even less about percieved technical disparities so reports about the Xbox 360 decline due to them have been grossly exagerated. Finally the Xbox 360 is still maturing as a platform and the biggest sales year(s) are still to come so hitting a target like 50 million consoles sold should be a piece of cake, and thats likely one of Microsofts goals anyway.

So yea, you got a problem with that?

Fire away!

I shall reply when this weeks hardware figures are in, if they beat PS3 globally in the coming week i shall be more inclined to give your thoughts credence