Sales increase in wake of price cut
By Nick Farrell: Friday, 12 September 2008, 9:38 AM
MICROSOFT'S PRICE CUT has increased boosted sales of its Xbox 360 by more than six times making it likely to win this console war.
Figures released by Vole show that people have been rushing to buy the machine since it dropped in price.
Good figures, but the Wii is still selling well and the PS3 is starting to claw back ground. Why would we think that Vole will be the winner in the long term?
Xbox makes the PS3 look very costly with little benefit. True you get a Blu-ray player, but the PS3 was supposed to ensure the future of Blu-ray not the other way around.
Blu-ray players will drop in price over the next few months forcing the PS3 to re-evaluate what it is designed to be a games machine.
Microsoft is doing quite well on the games front, too, at least as good as Sony and much better than Nintendo.
Vole's main competitor is the Nintendo Wii which we have been taking the pee out of for yonks because of its name. But the Wii's real problem is that it is much more a Japanese cultural device than a worldwide one. The Japanese tend to like loud gadgets, things like motion controllers and step exercise things sell like hot cakes. Less important are quality graphics and sound. Generally it has to be loud and colourful.
This makes the Wii great for Japan but is less interesting in Europe and the US. OK, the Wii is cheap as chips but it is also very limited.
The Xbox price cut which makes it almost as cheap as the Wii. However the Xbox can do a lot more and has far superior graphics. Putting the two machines side by side, the Wii looks like the dated gizmo it is. It also lacks games of any substance and cannot manage online gaming at all.
Our guess is that it will be the shift to online gaming and services that will finally be the nail in the Wii dream. Microsoft is doing its online experience pretty well and chances are it will be expanded.
Having had a year's march on the much delayed PS3, and been online a lot longer than the Wii, Vole will eventually knock out its rivals and win the console war.
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