PS3 and 360 Price Cuts, Before Holidays End

A lot of people have purchased the Xbox 360 and a growing number have had new interests in the PlayStation 3. The summer time is winding to an end and fall will bring us a new host of video games and reasons to keep playing our current generation consoles. Many analysts and industry leaders believe the 360 and PlayStation 3 will undergo a USD $50.00 price cut before the Holidays begin.

With holiday madness comes momentum and sales, a USD $50.00 price cut would help bring new momentum to both consoles, especially with Nintendo lapping them in sales. Nobody has considered the direction of the Wii as it doesn’t need to be priced competitively given this is going to be the third year it’s impossible to find in stores.

Do the consoles really need a price cut? It’s hard to argue the PlayStation 3‘s dire need for cutting in price given its already outrageous costs for a console with the least amount of desired titles. The Xbox 360, for most, has the best lineup of titles with a strong fall series of games. The Wii… well, titles don’t really matter just yet because people still buy the console upon sight. The PlayStation 3 is showing off some impressive graphics for this fall and early next year, it may almost be time to invest in the product.

The fall games will keep hardcore gamers buying titles but it will do little to inspire new console sales. If GTA IV, Halo 3, Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid 4 couldn’t drag a gamer to buy, what fall titles will do so this year? Probably very few.

It’s time for the big console vendors to broaden their audience by opening the console to a demographic of gamers that just can’t afford the higher graphic consoles. No, USD $50.00 won’t bring in everyone but it may inspire those on the fringe of consideration to change their minds. With their new consoles in hand they can use their USD $50.00 savings to purchase a new holiday release title.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

PSN Outage Causes 200% Rise in PS3 Trade-InsPSN Outage Causes 200% Rise in PS3 Trade-Ins

The patience of PlayStation 3 owners is wearing thin as retailers are reporting a 200% increase in PlayStation 3 trade-ins, usually for Xbox 360 consoles, as well as sales slumps for PSN points cards and fewer multiplatform game sales for PS3.

“In the first week of downtime we did not really see any major change in sales or trades,” says one source, a store manager at a major UK retailer speaking on condition of anonymity. “However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”

Another UK source has reported that the independent retailer had seen a “massive increase” in the volume of PS3s traded in in recent weeks, and has pegged the biggest trade-in demographic as “the hardcore online shooter crowd”, who are logically the group most likely to defect when their online gaming is wiped.

(more…)

Blu-ray Doesn’t Validate Your Console, SonyBlu-ray Doesn’t Validate Your Console, Sony

Is Blu-ray dead? Tech Sites around the Net are calling it a “death spiral” and we’re now looking at the downfall of the winning high definition format. Many non-PS3 Blu-ray players are still in the USD $200.00 range, a bit high for mass market adopters, and people aren’t planning to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player in our economic slump.

What’s the market share of the Blu-ray product? Four Percent. Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 have a lot of battle scares after the fight with HD-DVD to “win” the format war. In the end, Sony won the battle but the war was not with the HD-DVD format, it’s with the average Joe consumer.

Does this effect the PlayStation 3? One of the up sells of the PlayStation 3 was the Blu-ray capabilities, it games and it’s an entertainment device all-in-one. It’s a great deal right?

“The advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.” (zdnet)

The obstacles against the Blu-ray format are huge, especially with NetFlix coming to the Xbox 360, high definition download options and licensing costs on the Blu-ray to movie creators. Blu-ray won’t die in this generation of PlayStation 3 consoles but many folks, including Apple, are pausing to see if it has any chance at all to break into the industry.

Four percent just isn’t enough to inpsire confidence.

Rumor: Xbox 360’s New 60GB ModelRumor: Xbox 360’s New 60GB Model

The latest and greatest rumor on the Net brings back old rumors and spreads them with new rumors. The Xbox 360 will be getting a price drop on their 20GB model because they’re going to release a new 60GB model to replace it.

So, in essence, the price drop is just to move consoles off the shelves to make room for one of greater disk capacity. With all these Rock Band style games arriving, each with full song downloadable content (DLC), we’re going to need bigger disks! However, we don’t all want to invest in the 120GB Xbox 360.

Ars Technica says this information comes from a reliable source. Reliable source or common sense? The idea of dropping the Xbox 360 Pro down to a price that’s only USD $20.00 away from their lower model seems a bit rediculous if the original rumor is considered true. DLC is growing, disk capacity is becoming a bigger issue and finding manufacturers to build older 20GB disks is going to get tougher as months tick by.