Thread fails!

When people will do a thread about "will MS give up the Xbox brand?" since the only thing MS ever managed on the console wars is lose 6 billion dollars?

The anti-PS3 crowd said this in 2006 and 2007 and they have twice been proven wrong. But this time they are definately right, 3rd times a charm. It's going the way of the Dreamcast, Sony are the next Sega. Sony + Sega = Sogany. I'm going to call them Sogany from now on.

ps3 is going to outsell n64

Are the two consoles analogous in why they would fail. The answer is absolutely not. Sega failed due to the fact that it couldn't play industry politics. They failed to obtain critical support, and thus the sales plummeted. Which in turn lead to abandonment in the retail sector. That said while the means would probably be different the ends can be the same.

The problem for Sony is not the sales which many posters erroneously assume. It would not be an issue of the console not selling, or the console selling enough. The issue would be that of Sony not selling enough to maintain its production system. Which is a full capacity system, and is not flexible. They simply cannot decrease production without increasing their losses. Not lost profit mind you, but the price of manufacture would increase.

Basically Sony needs to perform par year over year. Otherwise they have to order fewer parts which makes them more expensive. They have to produce fewer machines in a system that needs to make more, but they still have to cover the overhead. So as far as profitability goes Sony is crammed right into that rock and a hard place.

Decrease the production and their losses increase. Decrease the prices and the losses increase. Do nothing and the losses increase rapidly, because liquidity is locked up in the physical asset of hardware unsold. Remember two million consoles could be as much as a billion dollars that Sony cannot spend. The only question is how much more can Sony afford to lose.

Which is another fallacy making the rounds. The thought that Sony can absorb the loss no matter what, or can simply sell off assets to cover the loss. Sony has a finite number of assets in a buyers market. Which is not exactly a time in which you want to sell. If you have a factory that is worth five hundred million dollars, but the best offer you could get is two hundred million. Well is it worth selling that asset to cover the losses on a product that is only losing you money month after month.

The answer is this Sony has a limit. Yes everyone said that the future for the PS3 was bleak two years ago. Nobody reasonably expected Sony to gladly eat the losses they have on the PS3. They expected Sony to behave rationally. Right now it is looking to have been a serious financial blunder for the company. All that money lost, or leveraged could have been a godsend in this current economy had it gone right into a vault.

In this economy Sony has to have set a limit for the losses they can continue to absorb. With nobody bringing in money there is nobody to cover the shortfall, and with a soft market for selling. Selling things to bankroll the PS3 only increases the net loss for the company. Sony cannot continue to burn fat at a prodigious rate to fuel a product that will perpetually loss lead against two competitors who have all the incentive, and assets in the world to encourage this.

I think the bottom line is if the sales decrease even marginally in response to a global economy that is getting softer then at some point this year. It will probably be the smart thing to do for Sony to drop the product line. So no it is not impossible. I say if Sony falls three million short year over year then I would say yes the economic pressure could force them to abandon the product. The idea of the console folding this year is not far fetched at all. We have an economy that can level a critical blow. Especially given that the console has to be mopping up its own price level as we speak.

Not bad as in third place weekly sales and third place overall sales not bad?

no it won't do really good. next gen is what can save them(maybe they won't even call it the PS4 out of shame of PS3?). but for the ppl saying it has good numbers but just not compared to the competition...that absolute bull@!%#

PS3 is more like N64 a console that was supposed to destroy the opposition, but its suprisingly beaten by someone else. It will not be discounted but i wonder how much it can sell lifetime?

Let a guy with an Xbox avatar tell you that the Playstation 3 isn't going to be discontinued and looks likely to pass the 50 million units mark at some point.

Indeed, which would be passing the SNES and approaching the NES.