What Microsoft this last year that led to their dominance was cut prices on every one of their models during time when all their biggest competition could afford to counter with was to increase the hard drive of their most popular SKU when demand for the system at its current price had all but dried up.

If any of this sounds familiar it's probably because it's exactly what's happening this year except with the roles of Sony and Microsoft reversed. Without a new price point for either of their SKUs, Microsoft has a very real chance of getting decimated this holiday season if they can't release some kind of hardware moving software that can compete with Gran Turismo 5, Final Fantasy XIII, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Wii Fit Plus. Currently the best Microsoft has to offer is Forza Motorsport 3, but it's still pretty far away from the previous titles in that regard.

This move by MS really reminds me of this....

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/15/sony-cuts-80gb-ps3-price-to-400/

de javu any1??

The Elite was $480 at launch in the US, so that's a drop of $180.

Sony's losses since the PS3 was launched: -

2007 - $2,483,437,762

2008 - $1,330,793,265

2009 - $624,981,361

And yeah, you can say "but MS has made a loss too", but they don't have 2 other profitable consoles on sale at the same time. The PS3 has cost them billions and the Slim is going to lose them even more.

The roles have not reveresed. Microsoft still have a mass market price console, Sony do not.

And Microsoft isn't funding one of the largest collections of first and second party development studios in the industry. Nor have they taken it upon themselves to avoid passing the costs of their online network onto the consumer and paid for it in full out of their own pocket.

It's easy to spin things one way or the other, but none of this has anything to do with how the 360 will sell this holiday.

It would appear the EEDAR disagrees.

Also Microsoft given that they've gone on record to state that the Arcade unit isn't the best selling SKU.

History too for that matter. When the PS3 dropped it's price in November 2007 to $399.99, the 360 didn't manage to outsell the system even once in weekly worldwide sales until PS3 had begun the saturate the market at it's new price and the 360 in turn had a firesale perpetuating the price drop on all of its SKUs in August. This was a period of time when the price difference between the two consoles was at least $120 worldwide and even more in Europe and Japan following price drops in those respective regions. It would appear clear from this that the gaming consumers around the world value the PS3 at least that much over the 360. Now we fast-forward to early 2009 when the price difference between the two consoles is at least $200 worldwide. Despite the noteworthy gap in prices that amounted to the 360 being half the price of the PS3, the PS3 still was able to beat the 360 in weekly worldwide sales for a handful of weeks. Now we come to the current pricing situation with the PS3 at $100 more than the cheapest 360, the lowest it's ever been. It's going to take a lot more than a partially market saturated, slightly more mass market price to keep the 360 anywhere near the PS3 this holiday in worldwide sales.

Well from your reasoning...if one of the reasons why Sony continually losses money is because of the online network they pay for, "out of their own pocket"...maybe they should start charging for it, lol.

i think the price cut will make it try to match last year numbers or pass it by a bit.

but sony have a value advance, no having to pay for live helps.

Microsoft's online network is far more advanced than Sony's. I'll gladly pay 50p a week for Live, but until PSN gets cross-game chat, a proper invite/join system and so on, I wouldn't pay a penny for it. Also, I download a lot of DLC and the content is regularly cheaper on Live (and available earlier most of the time). The map packs for COD:WAW are £7.99 each on PSN for example, but they're £6.80 on Live and even cheaper as I use pre-paid cards. The difference becomes negligable over a year. There's also demos of every game. I was interested in that Smash Cars game that's just arrived on PSN today, but it's £12 and once again there is no fucking demo, probably because Sony charge developers for bandwidth.

How much do Sony make from the PS2, PSP and associated games? They have revenue from that to prop them up, yet they're still losing billions because of the PS3. MS don't have other games machines on the market apart from the Xbox 360. MS are also paying for exclusive games and DLC (something which seems to really annoy the PS3 fanboys, even though Sony did exactly the same thing last generation). Sony may well be funding these "large collections" of game studios, but where are the games? The same PS3 games that the fanboys were waffling on about in 2008 still haven't come out. The 360 gets a few good exclusive games every year. So does the PS3, but what tends to happen is the PS3 crowd have this long list of exclusives, except they're staggered over about 3 or 4 years. I see it every year, "the 360 has nothing, while the PS3 has this, that, and this", except "that and this" end up on the following year's list as well.

They will probably be happy enough to stay steady.