PS3, Xbox Having Disappointing Christmas Season

Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 appear to be having a bit of a rough Christmas. For the PS3, it's all about launch jitters. The worst of these jitters is probably the dubious nomination from TIME magazine, who has cited the console as a 'bust'. The 360, likewise, is having problems meeting expectations, especially those of Michael Pachter. He's the gent that expected big sales this Christmas for the console, and he's now trying to figure out why the 360 fell short. What is, perhaps, a larger problem - lack of penetration for the Xbox Live service - is being discussed by Reuters. While the still laudable number of 4 million subscribers sounds impressive, the article points out that the runaway success of the Wii and the overall ratio of possible to actual subscribers should give Microsoft pause. In short, Sony and Microsoft are having good, but not great holiday seasons. Next year, when there's enough stock to go around and big games on the way, we'll see who really 'has the stuff'.

Comments

Re:More Gnashing of Teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even if total sales during the holidays are slow due to lack of supply"

This past week I watched in various console forums as news of large shipments hitting online stores and watched entire shipmeents of hundreds of 60 and 20gig PS3s get bought within minutes of someone posting the news of the supply. With 360s sitting unsold on store shelves and no one being able to find a Wii after the initial shipments, the PS3 is clearly the console right now that is firing on all cylinders. If the talk of the blue diode problem being fixed, Sony is supposed to be able to manufacture and ship about a million PS3s a month. That would explain the large supply we are seeing of PS3s.

I'm not buying any NextGen Console

[Qbertino]

Xbox is a no-go. To expensive, proprietary networking (Xbox Live) and a serious negative "dark-side" bonus from the PC OS division at MS. Wii *and* PS3 both don't have VGA or DVI output. Which I personally find really hard to believe but it appears to be the truth. PS3 is one of the rare home devices capable of non-compressed HD output - why it doesn't even have optional VGA/DVI at a retail price of 600 Euros is totally beyond me. I really don't know what the Sony board was thinking, but I do know I'd be doing a rabid fit and chopping of heads with a genuine japanese sword over at Sony HQ if I had any larges stakes in the PS3 business. Nintendo not adding VGA/DVI against all announcements really disapoints me too. I have a bunch of GameCube games I inherited from a friend and would've like to try the one or other new Wii title. Especially with a console only costing 200 Euros.
Whatever. I'm a modern 36 year old geek, I don't have a TV. I watch 'computer'. No VGA/DVI == not my console.
There you go, you just lost yourself one customer by skimping on parts that cost something close to 20 cents per issue. For my part you can all go broke.