Squilliam said: This is the universal truth of PS3 fanboys when talking relative 360/PS3 price: If the overall sales are higher, its because the Xbox 360 is cheaper than the PS3 as the major reason for the difference. If someone asks whether to get a PS3 or Xbox 360, they are told to get the PS3 because the Xbox 360 costs more over time as the major reason or about Blu Ray which is worth $$$. Im not trying to be mean, but im getting sick of the contradiction.

 

All that matters to the consumers when they buy a product is the entry price. The hidden fees aren't usually obvious to them. I know it wasn't to me when i bought my wii.

@ Squilliam

It's not remotely a contradiction.

Entry pricing is important for parents and such. But if you want to have some or all of the features and specifications which comes with the PS3 out of the box, it's much better value for money and more elegant in many people's opinion.

So two different things. Not everyone is aware of the 360 not coming with Wi-Fi or online gaming by default. Some don't care about the extras the PS3 provides or at least not enough at this point of time.

In any case it's universally accepted entry pricing plays a very significant role with regard to console sales.

With regard to if the extra features and more powerful specifications are worth it is a personal opinion. For me it certainly is.

Staude said: Squilliam said: This is the universal truth of PS3 fanboys when talking relative 360/PS3 price: If the overall sales are higher, its because the Xbox 360 is cheaper than the PS3 as the major reason for the difference. If someone asks whether to get a PS3 or Xbox 360, they are told to get the PS3 because the Xbox 360 costs more over time as the major reason or about Blu Ray which is worth $$$. Im not trying to be mean, but im getting sick of the contradiction.   All that matters to the consumers when they buy a product is the entry price. The hidden fees aren't usually obvious to them. I know it wasn't to me when i bought my wii.

ASP for the Xbox 360: $290 according to pachter

Cheapest Blu Ray player: $250 @ Bestbuy

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9244908&st=blu+ray+player&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218066284569

This is one difference which is obvious to consumers, heck even the difference between the Arcade + Blu Ray is $50 in favour of the PS3 and demand for Blu Ray has been increasing.

 

MikeB said: @ Squilliam but im getting sick of the contradiction. It's not remotely a contradiction. Entry pricing is important for parents and such. But if you want to have some or all of the features and specifications which comes with the PS3 out of the box, it's much better value for money and more elegant in many people's opinion. So two different things. Not everyone is aware of the 360 not coming with Wi-Fi or online gaming by default. Some don't care about the extras the PS3 provides or at least not enough at this point of time. In any case it's universally accepted entry pricing plays a very significant role with regard to console sales. With regard to if the extra features and more powerful specifications are worth it is a personal opinion. For me it certainly is.

The average price of the Xbox 360s sold in the united states is $290. So I want to you sip it like wine, swirl it around in your mouth and take in the full flavour and then swallow it. So even if one were to completely discard Arcade sales in the United States, the Xbox 360 would still outsell the PS3.

Xbox Live is worth more than PSN, people are willing to pay for it because their friends use it. There are free servers for WoW and yet people are still willing to pay the cost per month because its worth it for the social aspect.

As for Wireless a large proportion of homes in America get their internet through their cable TV operator which makes internet available at their main living room TV.

Blu Ray is something which is valued as well, if it wasn't then Blu Ray adoption wouldn't be accellerating. Therefore some consumers are tipped by this feature towards the PS3 as the difference in real price is far less than the cost of a seperate Blu Ray player.

 

It took you two years to figure this out.

Nice.

We seem to be seeing a lot of threads that look straight out of 2007, lately.

And to answer your question, of course it's bad! The PS2 will finish at around 140 million, the PS3 will be lucky to sell half that.
It's good for Microsoft, of course, as the 360's sales will double the Xbox's sales, and then go further.

But then, you have to ignore the PS2's success, because Sony messed up and it's pretty much a level playing field.

The Xbox360 outsells the PS3
The Xbox360 makes money
The Xbox sold 24 million, The Xbox360 is gonna double that, plus some millions.
The Xbox360 pushed Xbox Live to a new level, it is one of the biggest On Demand services in the world (The largest for HD on demand)

The PS3 is in third place
The PS3 has lost around 6 billion dollars and it is still not profitable
The PS2 is still selling and its userbase is around 140 million
The PS3 should rule everything out there. This one should sell at least as much as the PS2, but has no chance to do this.

 

So please stop this price-tag, recession - talk. The PS3 was made to rule the videogame industry and it is not. Why do you blame Microsoft for offering a cheaper console? You should blame Sony for offering a over-priced one. They chose this way and they failed.

@ Kantor

I think it's far too complex to say Sony messed up with the PS3, it depends on the primary goals Sony has for the short and long term. If short term gaming division sales and profits would have been their primary goal, the PS3 has been extremely unsuccessful of XBox-like proportions in terms of especially profits.

Regarding sales, the PS3 is mildly successful as it does sell 10 million units per year of wordwide availability. Much better could have been achieved by making the PS3 less powerful and thus less expensive to make. But it's still tracking roughly 9 million unit sales better than the PS1 did at this point of time, despite the higher entry pricing.

However that clearly doesn't seem to have been their primary goals, as if the PS2 retired more quickly and PS3 sales would have been higher, short term losses would have been far greater.

What seems to have been Sony's main goals:

- Provide a console which can stand the test of time like no other Sony console before it from a technical perspective regarding gaming.
- Provide a console which interests people more with regard to adopting HDTVs, surround systems and Blu-Ray movies.

Sony seems to have been pretty succesful with regard to this. Rival HD DVD died quicker than expected, HDTV ownership is the highest amongst PS3 owners and many SDTV PS3 owners are looking for an upgrade, etc.

The PS3 is most geared at the mature male gamers, the 360 at teen males and the Wii at kids and females. One could be of the opinion that this is a great situation as all major gamer groups are being served by appealing console solutions. They are all attracting different kinds of gamers (in addition to the more or less overlap). Nobody is left in the cold and the PS3's main userbase is also more relevant to them regarding their other tradings.

Sony isn't really doing that bad, their stock pricing went up when it was revealed they only lost 1 Billion USD. Other Japanese electronics firms didn't fare that well, Hitachi lost 8.1 Billion USD last year, Toshiba lost 4 Billion USD last year, NEC lost 3 Billion USD last year, Panasonic lost 3.95 Billion USD last year, etc.

Squilliam said: Staude said: Squilliam said: This is the universal truth of PS3 fanboys when talking relative 360/PS3 price: If the overall sales are higher, its because the Xbox 360 is cheaper than the PS3 as the major reason for the difference. If someone asks whether to get a PS3 or Xbox 360, they are told to get the PS3 because the Xbox 360 costs more over time as the major reason or about Blu Ray which is worth $$$. Im not trying to be mean, but im getting sick of the contradiction.   All that matters to the consumers when they buy a product is the entry price. The hidden fees aren't usually obvious to them. I know it wasn't to me when i bought my wii. ASP for the Xbox 360: $290 according to pachter Cheapest Blu Ray player: $250 @ Bestbuy http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9244908&st=blu+ray+player&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218066284569 This is one difference which is obvious to consumers, heck even the difference between the Arcade + Blu Ray is $50 in favour of the PS3 and demand for Blu Ray has been increasing.

So are you suggesting that people buy a blu ray player instead of a video games console :p regardless of what they can do, people won't pay 400 dollars if they just wanna watch blu ray if they don't have to.

 

Again consumers don't see all of those advantages..

 

A 360. Is almost at the price of a ps2.. compaired to a ps3 which is 3 times that of a ps2. That's what the consumer sees.

 

There is one thing that people always land up doing on this website and many others and that is they take one peice of info or one month of sales figures and try to over complicate things.
This month and the next 2 or even more are going to be very slow months for the gameing industry. There is not going to be much sales diff between the 2 consoles simply because people are not going to go out and buy them. The only time these systems are selling around now is peoples b-days bonus checks or some such. If you wanted to make some sort of sound topic then a look at a period of a couple of months (lets say the first 6 of this year) and then compaire and have youre discusions.
You cant give a good argument about something like ps3 selling on par with 360 when you just use 1 months sales data(and a very slow month at that)
Anyway thats just my 2 cent.

CrazzyMan said: 1) PS3 has entry price of 400$ and is the most expensive console on the market. That is 2x time more expensive, than x360 entry price. 2) During recession the most expensive console on the market suffers more, than cheaper ones. 3) US April sales: Xbox 360 - 175K PlayStation 3 - 127K Japan April sales: PS3 - 108,530 360 - 27,381 http://www.nintendoeverything.com/?p=15848 TOTAL April sales for US+Japan: PlayStation 3 - 235K Xbox 360 - 202K With having in mind, that VGC probably undertracked Others PS3 sales estimates, it`s pretty much safe to say, that in April PS3 was outselling x360 WW. With all above said, this is the power of PLAYSTATION brand. =)

PWNAAAAGE! If I were an xbot I'd be having nightmares about the PS3 price drop. The PS3 has a $500 model to you know. And the arcade accounts for at least 50% of 360 sales.