E3 is right around the corner in June, and while Nintendo's Wii U is likely to grab the spotlight with no next-gen announcements planned from Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo's rivals could apply some pressure to the market with hardware price cuts. In fact, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter sees a PS3 price drop as a likely outcome at E3.
'consoles sell according to the software available'
Yeah, Patcher is a waste of life, but I too think both consoles will see a price drop at E3. Sony needs to break the $200 magic price mark. There's just something about that $200 mark that brings consumers running... even though it's only a $50 difference. MS should offer the 320gb at the $200 price point, and both Sony and MS need to have motion control system packages under the Wii U's price point. Nintendo's new console will be the must have holiday gift and in short supply, so if Sony and MS have a better priced console and readily available it will give them both monster sales this holiday.
http://www.vgchartz.com/yea...
http://www.vgchartz.com/yea...
Brish I wouldn't use VGChartz to back up anything considering most people will just laugh at you.
As for Pachter, he's just being an idiot as usual. Sony isn't trying to beat Microsoft in sales. They could easily do that by dropping the PS3 to a price that no one could ignore. However, Sony is trying to make money and since they are the only console to make money at a higher prices then the other two consoles, I find it highly unlikely the PS3 drops in price in this year. If it does, it will be towards the end of the year in time for the holidays.
i think you'll find that 'catching up' eventually leads to 'being caught'
http://ps3.ign.com/articles...
These articles always leave out the info that contradicts their central theme.
lol@"ign" and "opinion"
This is what I don't get. Why do people assume N4G only applies to America. N4G is a news feed for games. Period. That includes the UK, Japan, and any other nation with significant news in gaming.
then get the "Great Wave" PS3 skin oh yessss :)
here in seattle.
bought second one saturday.
I think if they made it known people would understand :) however they dont......
just to answer one of your questions.
as of nov 2011:
If you average out worldwide units sold per month of each console, the numbers favor Sony. Over its lifetime of 72 months on the market, Xbox 360 is averaging about 800,000 units sold per month. Over 60 months on the market, PlayStation 3 is averaging 925,000 units sold per month.
Based solely on averages, if you were to remove Xbox 360's year head start, 57.6 million units sold becomes 48 million units sold. If you were to give PlayStation 3 12 more months to sell, paralleling Xbox 360's lifecycle, PS3's 55.5 million units becomes 66.6 million units sold.
+bubbles.
Now, let's see someone call that a lie, or minimize its importance. It's only a matter of time.
How many price drops?
How many models?
How many bundles?
Maybe its time to let this issue die and move on. People keep bringing up the 360's headstart but it is what it is, a headstart.
If this issue is so important to some here then maybe we should be mad at Sony for not releasing a year earlier.
And every year except last year and that one year they tied, the PS3 has. What's your point?
I don't understand why this is even an issue for debate. Since the 360 had any competition, head 2 head it's been outsold. By the Wii and by the PS3.
And even though the 360 clings to it's small lead from it's time when it was sold unchallenged, we know it doesn't matter because research has shown that when it comes to consoles out in the wild, there are more active PS3's out there than there are 360's. This is what matters to the industry. It's not the slight lead Microsoft's console still clings to on paper, it's the amount of consoles out in the wild and what's moving the most software. That's what makes the industry thrive - software, nor hardware. And from the developers themselves we know that with the exception of Call of Duty - revenue generated between the PS3 and 360 are neck and neck. So in this great pissing match, as far as the industry is concerned - so far it's pretty much a tie.
All this moving the numbers around is stupid... As of today, ms has sold more consoles world wide. Ms is still ahead of sony by a few million some 6 yrs later some of you just have to get over it, cause new consoles will be here soon.
The simple fact is that 360 had it's BEST year in 2011 when it was up against it's toughest competition. PS3 dropped to $249, and Wii dropped to as low as $99 in 2011, yet 360 still handily beat them both WITHOUT a price drop of it's own.
"IF" you were to remove Xbox 360's year head start, or "IF" you were to give PlayStation 3 12 more months to sell,
Why ask IF when there is no IF, you already know the result. What is the total current console sold now, as in what is the current state of gaming consoles, in REALITY, no IF?
Here is some food for thought:
You (ps3) and me (x360) join a race. You arrived late and you remained last. So instead of asking why you lost, you said "if" you were early, you could have won.
1. Well why didn't you show up early like i did?
2. Do you ever think or would admit that it is your fault for coming late to the race and lost? Should I be blamed for you being late?
3. I'll admit, you ran faster than I'm. Everyone know You and You were their favorite while I was a nobody. I join in as a rookie which you didn't even notice since you left me in the dust from the previous race. You still take me lightly this time around, running high on your ego, so you take your time thinking you could beat me, but now you just trailing behind. Who fault is it? It is me or you?
4. Haven't you learn anything from the Tortoise and the Hare story?
5. With that said, we both lost to that old veteran runner; he was late too like you. What a shocker.
i do like ur comment.
But between microsoft and sony, microsoft is the more ego-driven company.
Microsoft doesnt even care about sony. They're more worried about apple and google.
So it's okay to ignore the Ps3's general sales just because? Oh, well, so long as we're ONLY discussing NPD, we can say that the ps3 is "lagging" behind the 360 and SEVERELY needs a pricecut.
"When will people learn that we can ignore the ps3's general success and delude ourselves by sticking our heads in the sand with NPD sales charts? If Pachter, a supposed professional, wants to talk as if a limited scope shows he entire picture, why can't he without you evil pstree fanbois getting all over him??"
You're more than happy to ignore how the ps3 is REALLY doing in favor of NPD numbers, though. You KNOW that if the tables were reversed, you would NEVER let a portion of sales that show the ps3 favor be treated like the whole.
I agree with you that MS is pretty arrogant too, and that is why they are late and losing in the mobile/search market against Apple and Google; Although those are entirely different markets.
I think eventually, OS, which is MS strength, might also become obsolete.
I expect Sony to give a pricecut around september, like they did in 2009 and 2011.
Its a kinect joke....
I fully expect a 360 price drop soon, though. It's been nearly two years.
Sony actually had their console cheaper than MS for a few weeks down here.
@DK286K
The xbox 360 price dropped back in 2010 and in 2009. ps3 dropped its price in what .. august of 2011?
My original point is its doesnt matter what either one do, they will drop their prices when ever they want.Ofcourse xbox will be the first to drop its price because it was the first to come out. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize that.
Yes and that momentum has kept them in 2nd place even though they launched first.
May I remind you that Nintendo is still in the lead. Microsoft hasn't won anything unless they bypass Nintendo.
I think Sony will cut the PS3 price soon but at a time where people least expect it.
Nowhere in my post did I say they "won" anything. They're simply not going to be overtaken by Sony. They will always stay a slim margin ahead. Sony almost had them a couple years ago when the gap was down to around 500k, but now it's back in the millions and continuing to grow. You guys can only deny reality for so long. Frankly, I didn't think you'd still be doing it for this long.
Sony's price cuts have had zero effect on Microsoft's hardware sales. They've proven that not only do their competition's price cuts not make a dent in their units moved, but neither does delivering nothing but terrible Kinect games. It's an anomaly how they manage to keep shifting so many units while doing so many other things wrong. A real testament to the network effect and over-aggressive advertising.
@Baodeus,
That above comment is the current comment of the year!
Spot on.
If SONY is beating 360 in "Worldwide" sales by "their (SONY'S) numbers"; why did SONY have a "Worldwide" price cut this past year?
SONY's numbers are shipped & they need to get rid of that stock thats sitting in warehouses around the world.
If they are smart they would cut the price of the 360 right before the launch of Halo 4 for another mega sales boost.
OT: Perhaps he means the US / UK, because everywhere else, the PS3 sells more than the Wii and 360 weekly.
edit: @CGI-Quality..."but I dont' know a more credible source"? How about the companies themselves and what they reported:
http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...
http://socialbarrel.com/xbo...
But for the fun of it...
Its a matter of "whats more important" to you as a gamer....
Zelda OR Halo
Mario OR Killzone
Easy really... Nontendo
I dont give a damn if a game is exclusive or not, as long as it appeals me thats where I'll go.
Its pretty clear that its the same for tens of millions of gamers (360 anw Wii only owners) and dont forget the millions of PS3 owners who dont buy PS3 exclusives but only play FIFA/Madden/COD.
Theres a reason why so many multiplats sell better on the PS3 than PS3 exclusives.
Wii has the MOST exclusives out of all three systems, yet most of them are not what I would like to play.
Quality not quantity.
So many exclusives to play....
However, I have a dust box... For the record, Geow, the reason I have one.
And why cut the price?
I prefer my xbox for online gaming. Sure the PS3 gets the same DLC and fixes and barring the xchat it should be the same...but it's not.....PS3 is the last to get ANYTHING
DLC, PATCHES, HOTFIXES
and whats even worse PS3 gets the worst bugs on multiplats. Skyrim anyone?
by the time PS3 receives COD relates stuff, it's already old news. Mass Effect 3? yep PS3 didn't even get half of the Operations, and is last to received the new free multiplayer DLC....it's like living yesterday.
A few games get update simultaneously on PS3 and GOD FORBID, first on PS3.
So when my friends talk about "zOMG this new DLC is amazing" that's where i wanna be, not tomorrow, not next week or month, NOW!.
I perfectly understand why you prefer your PS3, i too think it has the best exclusives, but i still prefer to be where the buzz is. I think it's easy to understand maybe im just outside the norm.
That's not hard to explain. What does the PS3 have that the other consoles don't, I'll give you a hint
BLURAY!
Had HDDVD beaten Bluray or had the PS3 featured a standard DVD drive yet remained the most expensive system, the PS3 would be even further behind than it is now.
Being the most expensive system has hurt Sony this gen without a doubt.
Actually, in the U.S. - which is the subject of this article - the 360 sells at a higher average price.
That article I linked to is from October, after PS3's price drop last year. Since there have been no more price cuts since, that means the averages are still the same.
Your analysis is correct - however, it applies more to the 360 than it does to the PS3.
How can the PS3 be the most expensive system with a DVD drive instead of a Blu-ray.
And you are leaving out the most important variable for the gap, the 1-year head start which most likely would be less of a head start if they took out the Blu-ray drive
As I've pointed out when you brought up that article before, it fails to take into account what is included with the many bundles being sold, therefore making it a relatively meaningless comparison of the actual price paid per console. The article even states NPD won't provide specifics on the reason for the sudden $26 jump in average price paid for a 360. Obviously Microsoft didn't up the price $26 for a standard console, hard drive, and controller combo.
If the article is simply finding the average price paid for all SKUs, it says nothing about the average price paid per console. For every person buying a $400 holiday 360 Kinect bundle with two games, there could have been someone buying a $350 Move bundle that doesn't include two games. Obviously, that $400 isn't going to the 360 alone. It's going to the 360, Kinect, and two games included. It makes no sense to expect that a bundle with less included would sale for just as much. This isn't an apples to apples comparison.
Plus, it's rather presumptuous of you to say the averages have remained the same, however, you don't even know for sure what caused the average 360 price to spike. How can you make the claim that the average price has remained high, yet you don't know why they were high to begin with?
-______-
People call N4G a Sony haven, but back in 2007 , the general populous paid out, attacked and dumped on the PS3 and its owners...
Oh how the tide has turned.....
The PS3 has momentum, Why price drop....
PS: Thinking I might watch Dark Knight on BR then play online...K3? UC3? BF3?
choices, choices...
As for me , Great Movie, and great games.....
Whatever makes you happy ay?
@torchic
4,000,000 levels to choose from? I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing...
FALSE.
The 360 outsold the PS3 GLOBALLY in 2011. I know you and all those who agreed with you know that but think that if you ignore it, it may just become "untrue"
Heres the proof: http://n4g.com/news/933968/...
I wont ask you to provide any proof that the PS3 is outselling the 360 since ... well ... it doesnt exist.
Now maybe it will.change during the holidays like last year, but as of right now its outsell the 360 by a good amount each month.
Its always been like that. Last year was the first time 360 outsold the ps3 globally, cus with the help of the kinect.
But usually every year besides 2011 ps3 outsells the 360
So please explain, how a 8 million gap closes to 2-4 million gap.
The proof is in sales. Yeah 360 outsold the ps3 last year, but ps3 been beating it yearly for awhile.
If the ps3 wasnt outselling the 360 at all, the gap would of been 8 million plus still
Edit.
I find it funny how you guys hold on to last years sales to prove ps3 never outsold the 360 but fail to bring 08, 09, and 10
Some people on here may jump to a conclusion that he was referring to their country outside North America.
I guess 360 peeps are happy with using their gaming box for all that social stuff & Xbox new tv stuff.
I'll stick with my ps3 thanks. I want to play games - not but into MS media hub first gaming 2nd box.
I love games too, and I also love that both my systems cover all my media needs, and all from one place.
Personally, I think MS has done a great job this gen and it's showed in their sales. Sony has a lot of great games that I've enjoyed as well so it's a win win for me.
I think it's real obvious that this gen is coming to a close next year anyway.
TLR: http://thelegitreview.com/
I actually think the 360 with a decent sized harddrive should be the system they gets a pricecut NOW. The 250 gig is $299 for gamers and then there's yearly online gaming fees on top of that ? Come on now Microsoft. That's some straight up BS.
I can pop in a 750gb or 1tb drive in a 360 for under a hundred dollars but ms locks the partition, yeah, thanks ms, i'd rather pay you more for less.
am I right yall?
pay more for less pay more for less...
come on everyone chant with me, pay more for less pay more for less.
But it doesn't matter. We're 6 to 7 years in this gen and the 360 is still 3mln. ahead in sales. I still remember how Sony thought they would beat the 360 sales numbers in the first year of the PS3. I've seen the PS3 fanboys say each year after that, that it would be the year the PS3 would get on par and get ahead of 360 sales, but its still 3 mln. behind.
And the thing is: MS is in control. MS can dictate pricing and thus spike sales, more so than Sony can. We've seen that the past years and we'll see that till the end of this gen.
Not that it really matters in the end, they both sold solid numbers and are viable to release 3rd party games on. The real interesting thing is which of them will release the next gen console and if 720/PS4 this time around have full backwards compatibility to have a large library of games available at launch.
It seems the 360 will keep same kind of CPU/PowerPC but more cores (16 cores was rumored) and the PS4 will make a switch from Cell to some AMD CPU. The 720 will have the best cards for full BC for 360 games that will get touched up by using its power and the PS4 might have more problems on that/have to use a software emulator. Or Sony will make the same mistake again and have no BC in the end.
Furthermore in 2005, when the 360 got its triple core PowerPC CPU, it was high end. Heck, Apple left IBM/PowerPC CPU because they couldn't deliver to their wish of a triple core CPU as fast as they wanted and went Intel and then MS pwned Apple by getting the new PowerPC CPU.
It was really high end, and an expensive CPU when you wanted to buy a triple core CPU for your PC in 2005, still it had it on board. The PS3 had the special build Cell, not with real cores, but its multiple SPU's, also a very high end CPU.
Every couple of years the power of CPU/GPU can be multiplied by the factor 2 or 4 as seen in the past, cores will be about the same. They switched strategy from getting the highest Ghz in one core to multiple cores on a slightly lower speed to save energy and being able to still reach faster processing of tasks.
So 16 cores, yes it seems far stretched today, but might not be that strange in 2013/2014. For sure MS won't leave PowerPC and it'll have a lot more cores than it has now. Sony will leave Cell probably as it hasn't brought what they expected from it. On the other hand strange, because leaving the Cell will probably kill BC for PS3 games and will have devteams to have to start all over to get to learn the new CPU used while they just learned how to push the Cell...
Worldwide > America
I suspect we will see a $50 price cut to one if not both systems at E3 or just before and then come holiday more bundle and pack in options for each console to try and throw value for the dollar up against the new Wii U.
The PS3 outsold the 360 in 2011 and continues to in 2012.
I think we'll see a 360 priceut pretty soon , and then the PS3 will go down to $199 towards the end of the year.
Xbox 360 was the number one selling console of 2011
http://www.gameinformer.com...
we all know the holiday push might have put the 360 over the Ps3 but what they are talking about is who sold better for most of the year. reading comprehension is not one of your better qualities.
http://www.vgchartz.com/gam...
1 pre warranty that RROD'd
1 to replace the dead RROD xbox
1 to upgrade since the original xbox 360 didn't have an hdmi port
Believe it or not a few friends bought an extra xbox to keep in the closet for when theirs eventually died.
Its really just the same people buying it over and over.
I myself ended u=p buying about 3, not actually spending the total cash but through some trade in deals and exchanges it counts as sold new at the register. I even had one that was modified, died, so i took it back and got a new one through gamestops warranty, that replacement showed up at the register as a new purchase.
And yes, sony kicks ms's butt globally, only most of us americans are silly enough to invest so much in a console that didn't initially work or lacked features and get this.. is proprietary, yes, people slam sony for proprietary cards but ms is more closed as a hardware/network/and os. can't use your own harddrives, can't use your own anything. Even hackers slammed apple and sony saying that they bought the hardware and should be able to do anything with it but still have yet to install XBMC on a 360. LOL
and they pay to get online, LOL, the AOL of consoles.
MS control is primarily financial meaning they throw money at everything, they threw money at devs and publishers threw money at warranty, threw money to dumb down competition offerings, and its the fanboys paying for it through gold.
Thing is if your not into halo or gears, there is nothing on that console except paying for something you get free every where else. games have been offering xbl features for years for free on pc but ms found dummies to pay for it on console. thanks aholes for making it acceptable.
"Even hackers slammed apple and sony saying that they bought the hardware and should be able to do anything with it but still have yet to install XBMC on a 360. LOL" - Not sure what you mean. So are you saying that since hackers were able to get Sony's hardware that its a good thing?
"MS control is primarily financial meaning they throw money at everything, they threw money at devs and publishers threw money at warranty, threw money to dumb down competition offerings, and its the fanboys paying for it through gold." - LOL.. so you think Sony doesn't pay for stuff?? Really?
Look at 2011
PS3 14M WW, 4.5M US
360 13.5M WW, 7.4M US.
The 360 depends on the US market a hell of alot more the PS3 & Wii does.
These are VGChartz numbers. Yes there not 100% correct but its a base to work with.
2011
PS3 - 14.1 Million Worldwide as reported by Sony
360 - 14.9 Million Worldwide as reported by MS
Those numbers are fact... Sony and MS reported themselves... so save your VGChartz BS. I am sick of people trying to skew the factual numbers that both Sony and MS reported.
Now... as for 2012... no doubt PS3 is selling better WorldWide right now...they have always shown stronger sales early in the year compared to the 360. IF that continues then yes PS3 will outsell the 360 in 2012. The holiday season kicking off around the Sept time frame and through Dec. has been traditionally where MS performs really well. Maybe they will, maybe they wont this year. I hope both give price cuts this year though as it is time.
VGChartz LOL, people still rely on that site? Thought it died in 2005 along with a lot of others of the same caliber