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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'.
Stores all over North America have been getting restock every couple of days. The eBay scammers were counting on Sony having continued production problems past the holidays. That has turned out to be a false hope resulting in crashing eBay prices for PS3s.
Microsoft apparently is flooding the channel with 360s to try to be able to make an effort to be able to claim they reached their sales goals for the first year. People are reporting giant stacks of 360s sitting in aisles in stores this past couple of weeks - my local Frys has the biggest stack of consoles I've ever seen as of a couple days ago. As the article talks about, Microsoft is having a real hard time moving systems even with the 100 dollar rebates they've been paying stores for for the last couple of months.
Most interesting is the lack of supply of Wiis. People have speculated it is because Nintendo is having to switch the wrist straps. Whatever the reason, something is up. No one is reporting hardware failures like the 360, so it will be interesting to see what happened. I would not be surprised if the numbers for December are a whole lot closer between the PS3 and Wii than anyone imagined they would be.
Anecdotal story, but I may speak for others:
I am fascinated by the Wii, and already own two games(Zelda:TP and Super Monkey Ball) for the Wii...and I still do not own one. There just aren't any that aren't sold on the internet or on a freezing cold line at 3am.
So rather than going home empty-handed to sit out my holiday vacation days in boredom...I picked up an Xbox360 to tide me over till February when the Wii (hopefully) where the Wii is available on the inside of stores rather than the outside.
So my desire for the Wii managed to boost Xbox360 sales. Having an Xbox360 made a large number of games available to me, and it led to purchase a series of games I'd been curious about but never cared to pursue. So Nintendo can also be thanked for netting me 10-12 games(though only about 6 are new).
Naturally my story will not be common, but I don't think it will be all that rare. I just happen to have an excess of disposable income due to my circumstances and underdeveloped propensity to save.
Come off it. The only ps3 consoles selling at a premium according to your own link were those with extras such as included games.
Many of the listings had no bids at all, just the dashed hopes of a seller with a starting bid (of $650) that no one wants to make.
Not true at all. My friend is the ASM at an EB Games. I talk to him all the time about what they have in and wheat's selling. They get more Wiis the PS3s most of the time and the Wiis sell out within seconds. The last shipment they got people where waiting outside at 6pm the day before to get them, the PS3 just doesn't seem to move like that. The closest Best Buy to me has had the same PS3 for atleast a week.
The Wii has a supply problem because it has such a large demand. Nintendo is definitely shipping more Wiis than Sony is PS3, it's just that the demand for PS3 is already beginning to stagnate while the demand for the Wii is growing.
I had a Xbox 360...and then I borrowed my brother's Wii console. Not only did my wife actually stayed in the room while I was playing she actually played a couple rounds of Wii Bowling with me. The next day I listed my Xbox on eBay and plan to buy a Wii at the earliest opportunity.
It wasn't a tough sell at all.
If you haven't played one...do so.
http://www.bynarystudio.com