Its that time of the year again, time to make the prediction which will make people mad.
This is the situation last year and the year before for the 10 weeks to holidays:
| Console | Wii | PS3 | X360 |
| Total | 10,078,337 | 3,447,257 | 5,403,651 |
| Console | Wii | PS3 | X360 |
| Total | 6,612,858 | 3,859,801 | 3,609,353 |
So with with first example the Xbox 360 made an unanswered price cut and outsold the PS3 considerably, whilst with 2007 the PS3 made a massive price cut and barely edged the Xbox 360 in sales. However this year there is unlikely to be an unanswered price cut from either party so the relative results should be somewhere between these two points.
Heres the reason why:
| Console | PS3 | X360 |
| Total | 3,447,257 | 5,403,651 |
| America (4.3M) | 1,390,377 | 2,896,369 |
| Japan | 349,752 | 128,173 |
| Total Others (4.1M) | 1,707,128 | 2,379,109 |
| Console | PS3 | X360 |
| Total | 3,859,801 | 3,609,353 |
| America (3.8M) | 1,425,029 | 2,385,404 |
| Japan | 508,406 | 93,675 |
| Total Others (3.1M) | 1,926,366 | 1,130,274 |
As we can see the U.S.A becomes a stronger market than the E.U and the weekly sales differential swings wildly. Currently this weeks sales ratio for the PS360 between the U.S and the E.U is 8:11 in favour of the E.U, whilst during the holidays that ratio swings to between close to 1:1 or 6:5 in favour of the Americas. So just by the changing ratios between the different regions it swings the balance in favour of the Xbox 360 because that is its strongest region.
Beyond that the nature of the market changes. In a season of gift giving, and casual purchasers its the Xbox Arcade which rules. With fewer brand/feature concious people relative to price/relative price concious people the Arcade is the SKU of choice for people. The sales for last year said it all, Microsoft simply could not keep the Arcade in stock in many places and demand outstripped supply.
Im not going to predict the actions of Microsoft, they are a total PITA to predict sometimes. I think a reasonable assumption to make is that Xbox 360 sales for this holiday season will roughly equal the last years holiday season. I think its reasonable to assume that we will see a $150 Arcade this year, because Microsoft seems to understand the psycological importance of the Arcade being precisely half the price of the PS3. Any price cuts here will be to sustain but not increase sales, theres no reason to as the sales are already quite good.
As for Sony I think that a base sales rate of about 3M consoles follows the declining trends from last year quite nicely so any increase in sales would have to be relative to the 3M consoles they would be expected to sell had the price remained at $400. Thats taking into account the release of their exclusives at the end of the year. Because I think they will cut the price in early September by 25% I would say that they will miss out a lot of the short run increases in sales in the holiday season, but they will be factored into the overall numbers they sell to hit their 13M target.
I would predict a 50% increase in sales over where they would have been had they not done a price cut, so 4.5M is where I think it'll be and the Xbox 360 will probably sit somewhere in the 4.8-5.5M range as well. So there you have it, PS3 sales will be strong but I believe that the Xbox 360 will just edge the PS3 out by between 300-900k units, most likely around 500k.
Tease.
