NPD July 2010: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony respond

What can Sony do to get traction in the US? It’s no good to keep saying that you’ve had 12 months of consecutive growth when you still get outsold by the competition.

$50 price cut needed I think.

While I agree Sony do need a price cut. I don’t think it’s practical from a business perspective. They have only just started making a small profit on each PS3 sold,price cutting will mean more of a loss.

Though it would help if they at least cut the price in the UK so that it comes in line with the RRP £199 360.

I wouldn’t be surprised though if they announce a price cut at Gamescom on tuesday,with the new 360 slim,Halo and the inevitable price cut on the Wii this fall to combat Move and Kinect,Sony don’t really have a lot of options,especially if Wii gets price cut and Kinect gains traction.

Sony doesn’t need a price cut, PS3 is still cheaper than x360 since you don’t have to pay 60$ each year for peer-to-peer gaming, 3rd party promotions and access to free services like Facebook and Twitter.

very true Ge0force, people forget that….plus the blu-ray, internet web browser, rechargeable controllers and full PS1 backwards compatibility….(I still play PS1 disc games on my PS3 )

If Sony is going for a price cut they might as well take the lost and bundle move in there since taking $50 off the price would still put them back in the red. Get move out there as much as possible. PS3 with MOVE and PS EYE for $299. Who’s with me!

Agreed!

Hmmm, so yeah, basically PS3 is a Saturn this generation.
If Gran Turismo won’t help them sell consoles they are doomed for it’s 10 year life cicle plan and it won’t sell judging by how much preorders GT5 have.

Playstation is still a strong brand, but only in the next generation, this gen they completely lost ground because of too many mistakes in the 2006-2007-2008 year. 3 years of FAIL.

@3 No one gives a fuck about Blu-Ray this generation when you have a broadband connection. In the PS1-PS2 era CD and DVD drivers were obsolete.
I have PS3 and one blu ray media center. I never bought Blu Ray movie + i don’t even have a Blu Ray driver on my PC because i don’t need it. You don’t even need it for games on the fucking powerfull machine.
Blu Ray is a very good piece of device, but not in this generation. They could spend money not in the Blu Ray, but in better Geforce graphics card and that would be a killer for games.

I know why they did Blu Ray thing in their console, but it does not make a difference when we are at the digital download era.

and if 3D won’t work for them, they fucked up again. (I remember saying Sony is going to use 100$ million for the campaign for 3D) and again 3D is awesome, but this gen is very questionable about it on PS3. 3D on PS3 sucks, on PC kind of devices it don’t suck.

@6 tell that to HD-DVD and the millions of people adopting it everyday as the superior way to watch movies at home. As a matter of fact RED BOX (which is popular as hell here in the states) is about to start BLU-RAY rentals for $1.50 a night…..yea lets see Blu-Ray not matter then.

And if you don’t mind swapping disc this gen then that’s fine….just sucks when disc 2 is scratched and cracked and there’s no way to get pass disc 1 and ultimately finish on disc 3 *cough FFXIII 360 ver cough*

@7 I’m not saying that blu Ray is not a popular thing, i’m saying that in the digital era it is not important for the consoles.
You can watch 1080p just by downloading a freakin movie and you are done.

+ swapping is not the problem but in reality if Microsoft knew about this they could make an optional install for every game and here you go, you don’t need a disk at all.

For example. Last time i used DVD disk on my PC… Maybe… 4 years ago? If i buy games by retail (I always do) i just download a game from Torrents/official site and use my CD key, or i buy games from Steam where you don’t need disk at all. There is no swapping, there is nothing. With this method you can do Uncharted 2 thingy with no loadings.

As i said before, blu Ray is a good piece of media device, but it did a lot of bad things to the company. Even now they suffer from it. They only began to make little money from Hardware after so many years when Nintendo and Microsoft are on the money train for so many years.

We may be in the digital era but I don’t know who would rather have a digital download over physical media? Well for some stuff yea.

MP3 > CD

XVID > DVD

But I rather have a disc for a game and fortunately not a lot of people know about pirating movies and music so physical media is still the better preferred choice amongst billions.

@ 8 I think microsoft was stupid too still be stuck in the past still using regular dvds i love the ps3 blu-ray movies and game discs cause they are very hard to scratch unlike regular dvds and hold a lot more storage.

while it’s true that blu-ray is nice for the hd quality and the storage…the numbers don’t lie because the xbox 360 and the wii continue to outsell ps3 despite having blu-ray…@theevilaires the slim ps3 doesn’t have backwards compatability if i’m not mistaken…ps3 should have had the blu-ray optional like 360 had the hd drive optional and then let the consumer decide what they wanted instead of putting out a $600 console

THE WII FUCK YEAH THE WII WII THE MOTHERFUCKING WII YEAH

@ 3 4 5
That is authentic fanboyism :” No price cut !It is justified !!” LOL

@7 that redbox news is awesome- @ all – the ps3 is just coming into it’s own, dev’s are really just starting to unlock it’s potential. Looking forward I see the ps3 being able to do things this generation of xbox just can’t do efficiently. That is when the ps3 will see better numbers. Granted, we might have another xbox coming out by that time but who knows? I own both systems, but I game primarily on my 360 (mostly b/c of the controller). I bought my ps3 for exclusives mostly but I think that may change in the future. Probably crysis 2 for ps3 since I’ve heard that’s the better of the console versions. I just hate that controller.

Wouldn’t surprise me if Sony did a Sega and pulled out of the hardware market next gen and just produced software (where the money is).

They’ve hardly been profitable this gen.

The only company to produce anything remotely interesting this gen, in terms of hardware, has been Nintendo with the Wii/DS.

MS & Sony have hardly been inspirational…

Doesn’t anyone else understand that it is ok to be last in console hardware this gen? Sony will do just fine. They will sell systems, they will sell software, and they will turn a profit when it is all said and done.

Who is first, who is second, third it isn’t the same big deal it used to be. It used to be thought that the market could NOT support three consoles at the same time. But look at the way things are set up now. All three systems are healthy and alive.

In the end that is good for gamers. I can’t see how competition is a bad thing. And I think you can really see that in the xbla/PSN/Wiiware titles. I know they don’t get a lot of attention next to the big name retail releases but these things can be awesome. Has anyone gone a few rounds with Hydro Thunder or Monday Night Combat? Amazing games both of em, and I would say worth full retail price, esp MNC. That game is off the chart(think tower defense mixed with a class based 3rd person shooter, with money/customizable chars, offline or co-op upto 4 players, OR 6v6 online team matches).

I can not recomend MNC more. Its amazing, just freaken buy it. Bad name, awesome game.

But I think that having those types of games rolling off of the DD online game services is a direct result of the three console tight race this gen. Fat Princes, Castle Crashers, Lost Winds, MNC, you name it each game and each service keeps trying to out do the other other.

And no matter what happens in the end, we as gamers win.

Works the same for full retail games too of course, but with the huge dev costs and lack of risk taking, we end up with long lines of sequels and “Franchises”.

If you wanna see the bonus of this gen, look at the downloadable games.

Oh, and lol – Sony is NOT going to stop making hardware anytime soon.

OlderGamer said:
August 15, 2010 at 11:13 pm

Oh, and lol – Sony is NOT going to stop making hardware anytime soon.

Onlookers said the same about Sega…and look what happened to them!

OlderGamer renamed to WiserGamer or SmarterThanYouGamer! Well said sir. I shall look up MNC! Any other gems?

Callum said:
August 16, 2010 at 1:46 am
OlderGamer renamed to WiserGamer or SmarterThanYouGamer! Well said sir. I shall look up MNC! Any other gems?

for fucks sake. the only reason why xbox is winning in sales is cause of the yr head start, and being at a cheaper price. when the ps3 slim came out,being at the same price as xbox 360, it was outselling xbox in the US for months, and the reason why xbox took over again is cause of the xbox slim. but once that dies over in a month or 2, if a same priced xbox was up against a same priced ps3 , the ps3 will win. either way the ps3 is still the most popular console of the 2 world wide, and when u take away the 1 yr headstart, ps3 comes out at No1 in the US

@Kuwabara -> GO SURF ON vgchartz and educate yourself a bit…

Yes, lolchartz for the win. Nothing says accuracy like madeupchartz.

/grinds teeth

That aside, Kuwabara is right when he says a PS3 priced like an 360 would win handily… but then that’s part of the game. If you can cost reduce your tech fast enough or release it at a low enough price to start with, then it goes a long way to helping you obtain sales (and profit if you’re not forced to cut your prices too quickly).

Not right about the US thing though. In their respective first years on sale in the US the consoles sold…

360: 2.89m
PS3: 1.98m

@ RustyNoMore all PS3s have B/C with PS1 titles on disc. SONY just stopped the PS2 on disc stuff for now what it seems obvious reasons to make money back on HD Classics.