All three current generation home consoles are about to or have had substantial price cuts. Sony have been forced into it by being ridiculously overpriced, Nintendo are doing it to counter a huge slump in Wii sales and Microsoft are doing it because they can and because they want more market share. So let’s look at the current state of the Xbox 360.
Firstly for every three Sony Playstation PS3s in the world there are four Microsoft Xbox 360s. A considerable success considering that this is only Microsoft’s second machine and that they entered a market dominated by Sony.
Next the Xbox 360 is played more (figures for North America). It is played more than any other console and about twice as much as the Wii is played. This reflects the fact that it has a far bigger software library ( 684 Metacritic games) than the PS3 (384) and the Wii (455). And also that Xbox Live is a compellingly successful online portal that is a long way ahead of the competitors.
More telling is that PS3 and Wii unit sales in North America have decreased this year, at what should be the peak of the console cycle. Of the home consoles only the Xbox 360 has seen increased sales, up by 17% compared with 2008.
All this will change going into Q4, not only will the hardware price cuts be felt (for instance with PS2 owners upgrading) but there is a veritable glut of new AAA blockbuster titles on all three platforms, a glut that is continuing into Q1 ’10. It will be very interesting to see what the state of the industry is like in March, after the dust settles.
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Seems like you have an unusual bias towards Microsoft’s console. I wonder why? Interesting that almost every figure you quote is seriously skewed and flawed.
Firstly, the library of Xbox360 games, PS3 games can easily be found by wikipedia, instead, you counted the number of games reviewed by Metacritic? Do you really think the Xbox has more games than the Wii?
Secondly, you mentioned that only xbox360 is getting a price cut because “they can”? While the others are “forced” to? I wonder what you based your assumption on? PS3 Slim switches to the newest 45nm processes which is cheaper and uses a new fan system which makes it overall much cheaper to produce.
And the price cut that Sony made effectively made the 360 the most expensive console. Soon after Sony’s price cut, MS responded with a price cut on their own. This doesn’t mean anything. But if you want to infer, it is more logical to conclude that MS is the one who was “forced” to make a price cut.
Now even after a price cut, can the Elite, at the same price, out-do the PS3 which packed so much more features?
Next you mentioned some really subjective issues that were constantly being brought up, online services. Is it really ahead by far, as described by you? Even if it is, it is not bringing anything new to the table.
And I do not think it is relevant to bring up past year sales at all. You can infer that the 360 “was” looking good, but you can’t look at the past sales before the price cut, new games etc and say Xbox IS going to look good.
I suggest you should really look into the plans, marketing strategy employed by each companies in detail(publicity, new games, new hardware etc). And the market trend, for example, purchase intent (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24981).
Look at what’s planned ahead by each company, who is really looking “good”?
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Wildreamz dont be offended,wikipedia shows clearly that the 360 has more games than the ps3..as for the sales,when natal cums out ps3 sales will drop atleast 50%…with that developers will make lesser games for ps3…man u shudv counted your money b4 wasting it on ps3!
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haha, u are amusing, im not saying that the PS3 has more games than the 360, but not to the extend of that mentioned by bruce. And he seem to think that the 360 actually has more games than the wii, simply because he counted the number of games reviewed by metacritic.
I am questioning the way he get the numbers, is it objective journalism at all?
Personally, the number of games is not an issue at all, it is the number of quality games that really matter to the gamer that counts when you are choosing a console.
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360 actually has far more games than ps3 which should be painfully obvious considering it launched a year earlier i have both consoles and can give an informed opinion rather than some regurgitated **** i read on the internet i got both systems at their respective launches both had a dearth of games only it lasted 6 months for 360 and 2 years for ps3 people are slow to realize that this gen it’s all about 3rd parties they are generally superior and massively outsell first party titles and introduce new ip to the gaming sphere rather than a bunch of safe less risky sequels i have a friend who owns a computer store and he has cracked the ps3 and it is found to run games at lower framerates than 360 the more graphically intense the lower the framerate also ps3 owners never recieved a true price drop just a cheaper price for a gimped version of the launch ps3 while the 360 has gotten better with each revision it also has a weaker graphics card which cell cannot compensate for cheaply which is why games like uncharted will continue to be the exception rather than the rule for ps3 titles killzone2 uncharted are developed by wholly owned subsidiaries of sony that is why they exist a third party publisher would quickly go out of business using sony’s development process which is in a word slowww consider killzone2 was announced in 2005 but only released in 2009 no independent developer could afford that timetable especially considering how poorly it sold next to other titles that released at the time also the cell was never really optimized for console gaming which is why sony fanboys continue to blame poor porting for sony’s mostly inferior versions of third party titles when in fact games have been developed in parrallel since early 2008 and to this day third party titles like mw2 still run at half the framerate of 360 counterparts even first party games like resistance and killzone2 only run at 30 fps so all the people who cite noise rrod need to actually fire up a 360 you would find that this is no longer the case with the new chipsets involved hdmi added and the ability to accept all music formats while ps3 lost linux ,backward compatibility and some usb ports. back to games i can understand why ps3 fanboys and 360 fanboys debate about the number of title it’s because you only own your preferred system and talk out your ***** about the sytem you don’t own or likely never played if i had sat on my ass stubbornly refusing to buy 360 while waiting on ps3 i would’ve missed out on at least 150 to 200 games but i didn’t and im glad a friend of mine did just that now he comes to my house to play gow1 and even admits it looks **** compared to killzone2 or even gow2 but it’s so much more fun and i do think that’s the whole point of buying the games. i challenge anyone to dispute the validity of my statements. unless you all were just talking about exclusive that came out since 2009. so dont be so blindly loyal get both also buy less blu ray movies and more games the low attach rate will continue to hold psn back even if it miraculously gained all the features of live and microsoft miraculously stopped adding new ones the very low attach rate will continue to **** it it’s such a shame when a ****** rushed movie game outsells a consoles flagship title or going on psn only to discover your friends are still into old games and don’t have the new title to play with you but it’s great when you have a 360 right next to your ps3 and fire up live and see your freinds list lit up with people playing that same title on launch day no less. also the rate at which games released for ps3 during it’s first 2 years were nearly 4 times lower than games released for 360 so there’s no way having more exclusives for one quarter of one year could make this up and like i said before in todays world exclusives sell the least amount unless it’s mario or a bungie made halo title and since microsoft is playing the same ******** games sony played when xbox was revealed to be much more powerful than ps2 i dont see them catching up till the new systems make 360 and ps3 irrelavent then sony will continue to support ps3 till it dies like they did with ps2 those games i was talking about is buying up developers or getting exclusive deals to keep games off other systems much as sony did with ps2 so if you’re a true sony fanboy shut up and buy games