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Console Price Cuts And The Holiday Season

Posted by simoniker on from the negative-money-for-console-love dept.

Thanks to CNN Money for their article discussing the state of the console market heading into the Xmas season. The author discusses the lack of major price-cuts for the PS2 and Xbox, suggesting: "Sony feels it can make more money this holiday season from its existing customer base", and speculating: "It's more and more likely that the reason we haven't seen price cuts from Sony and Microsoft is their next generation machines won't hit stores until 2006." If this is the case, it's suggested that "...the life cycle of this [hardware] generation will be the longest of any in the industry's short history", perhaps surprising considering rapidly advancing technology.

2 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Remember the days? by M3wThr33 · · Score: 0, Troll

    The Intellivision got an upgrade to add VOICE!
    The NES had many MBC upgrades, one of which quadrupled the resolution!

    You got the SNES/Genesis because the sprites looked so much better, the controller had more buttons and the music was tons better.

    With the PSX/Saturn came CDs and 3D. Wow!

    With the DC/PS2/Etc. came... BETTER 3D and uh... DVD? MS added a harddrive. . .

    Aside from polishing off little things with consoles, there's no real limits they can't reach if they just don't use too many polygons.

    But wherever Mario is, I'll go.

  2. Hey retard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    As a proud Dreamcast owner, I would like to point out that the release date of the Dreamcast was 9/9/99, which puts it closer to 2000 than to ... 1998? Are you *RETARDED*? Plus, I bought mine for $50 just before last last Christmas, which places its lifecycle at about:

    2000-2001 (inclusive), so that's 2 years instead of 5. Allowing for tolerance ... you're still TOTALLY OFF.

    As for the Sega Saturn, you can put the effective lifecycle at:
    5 minutes before purchasing Saturn - 5 minutes after purchasing it ... ... which in your math, accounts for 4 years. Good work!

    The point is, a console lifecycle for the true console gamers has been much shorter after the SNES/Genesis days--Sega CD, Sega Genesis 32X, 3DO, Jaguar (64 bits! what a joke), N64, the *cough* Saturn... ...then came the Dreamcast, which was hot hot hot for all of a week before the rumors started that Sega was abandoning it... ...then came the triumvirate of consoles. Nintendo is about one year away from throwing away their GameCube and moving their support, Sega-style, to one or both remaining consoles.

    The PS2 graphics look dated, *already*.

    The XBox runs on a hard drive, so good luck for the collectors who actually believe it will work 5 years from now. HINT: It won't!

    So what does this mean for the next console? It will come sooner than you think, within two years is my estimate. But then again, you can just use your creative math, and say 1998+2 years = 2009. Good work!