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Games Analysts Weighs In On Console War
Gamaustra's latest in its 'Analyze This' series asks the question point blank: Which Console Will 'Win' 2007? The regular series puts weighty questions to business analysts who specialize in the games industry, to get a gestalt opinion on what's really going on. The well-respected Michael Pachter, of Wedbush Morgan Securities, had some of the most interesting comments to review. He says that Nintendo will 'appear' to win in 2007 because of its low price and innovative control scheme, but that Sony will be the winner in the long run. From the article: "My best guess is that Sony emerges as the winner of the movie format war in late 2008, and games start looking noticeably better in 2009. That's when Sony starts looking like the winner of the next generation battle. All of this is pretty far out, and a lot can happen with pricing to change things. For example, if Sony gets down the cost curve for Blu-ray and Cell processors, [the PS3] may be below $300 shortly thereafter. It's hard to say that this will happen before 2009, but it could. That would change everything."
Apples and oranges. The environment around the PS2 is much much different than PS3. Look at what the PS2 had to face in the Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube. There wasn't much difference in game quality, so the PS2 wasn't surpassed by anyone. There wasn't much difference in gametypes (Wii), so you could treat the systems as equals. The Gamecube was cheaper, but not by half. Factor in PS2 locking in GTAIII, GTIV, FFX all in the same year, and you've got a slam dunk. There was no stopping the PS2, so the bottom line: why cut the price when you're selling like hotcakes? You never really know how much they were making off each one, but given that they didn't need to chop the price down, why bother? In this case, they'll continue to lose money on each system but the price can come down faster. There's also the component cost: DVD wasn't super commonplace in 1999, but it wasn't brand new either. It had been out a few years and definately wasn't as new as Blu-Ray. The initial price drops in components as adoption speeds up are much higher than later on the lifetime of a technology in terms of percenteges. So given that, I can definately see the price coming down a lot faster than PS2.
It looks a little different when you get the punctuation right
t ion+3%2C+wii&ctab=1&geo=all&date=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=xbox360%2C+playsta
Anyways, as was already noted, Google trends don't exactly indicate hard scientific data, and especially sales. The 360 outsold the Wii 3/2 in the US over the holidays and the PS3 3/1 yet it lagged behind both of them in the Google trends for that period.