The Death of the PS3 is Greatly Exaggerated
Anthony Perez over at Amped News writes an opinion piece that the “Death of the PS3″ is a “Hasty Conclusion.” I have to agree with him on that one.
From his article:
“Last year, at NotifyWire.com, we tracked several one thousand dollar Xbox 360 bundles which would sell out in less than two minutes after becoming available,” said Ian Drake, president of NotifyWire.com, an online retail tracker that sends out “In Stock” notices via e-mail and newsletters. “Just today, a one thousand dollar PS3 bundle was in stock at eToys.com for over 12 hours. This sort of thing didn’t happen with the Xbox 360 until well after Christmas.”
An overpriced bundle not selling out for 12 hours, how SLOW… The only reason the companies come out with these bundles is to keep the Ebayers from flipping the boxes. Very few people want to pay over $1000 for a 60gig PS3 with 5 Games of which they may only want one. Yes, you can return all the games to the store, that is, if the store allows you to only return the games, or only return the bundle.
Also, keep in mind that the Xbox360 was selling to an empty market; there was no other “Next Generation” console game system out there. PS3 has to compete not only with the Xbox360, but with the Wii. And, uh, the Wii goes for $250 retail. No where does anyone EVER (until I read the Toronto Star article cited below) mention the price differential between the products. When the anti-ebay Wii bundle is $550, guess which one the non-traditional gamer is going to buy first.
Also limiting them is the, well, lack of hardware. The Times of London states:
“The big challenge for Sony is that PS3s are so hard to get,” said Baker. “To a large degree, many people are buying something else. Sony is going to have to battle to retain the market share that they’ve had historically. They’ve given a two Christmas advantage to Microsoft, and a one Christmas advantage to Nintendo.”
Sony also dug themselves a big hole with no real premier launch title out there. But then again, Sony didn’t do well with the PS2 either. PS2, I was amped for NHL2001 & SSX, but it wasn’t until March that I got it with Gran Turismo 3. And I remember even then having to sit and hit reload on Amazon.com over and over again. I still think it will be that way in March. People like me sitting on the sidelines waiting for Gran Turismo HD, or Final Fantasy XIII. And because of the price, we’re all more than willing to wait, too. Especially with Final Fantasy XII just recently out for the PS2.
While holiday sales totals are the subject of much speculation on the web, the research firm NDP Group estimated that Wii’s sales figures for November were more than double those of its technologically beefier competition. According to the firm, Wii sold 476,000 units, while the PS3’s figures were put at 197,000.
…
“I think the Wii still has not proven that (the motion-sensitive controller) is anything beyond a gimmick,” Crecente said.
“The PS3 still has a lot of work ahead of it. It still has to make a game that’s not derivative of what’s already out there, or a sequel of something that’s already been produced.”
Indeed, it will be interesting. And also mind you this is going on with a background that Intel/AMD/NVidia/ATI are pushing the PC gaming envelope even further.
