Dell Canada is selling the 40GB with R&C and HDMI cable (plus SM3 Movie) for $399 CDN right now....I've already had two buddies that are SONY fans make the jump in the last week due to this sale.
499-399$ PS3 is going to put this one over the top.
Also a lot of hold-outs are now jumping on the 60GB, especially here in Canada now that the prices are corrected somewhat to account for the high CDN$.
This is going to be a strong Christmas for the PS3 amidst the heaviest competition its ever felt. I still think we're going to see a Xmas season on par with the PS2's second Christmas (which you may also remember, was missing some key exclusives).
Really what Im saying is, so far I've seen nothing to differentiate the PS3 from past successes, sales wise. Better marketing and consumer level prices are going to put Sony over the top this season.
@chill21genlee, if they can get people to think the ps3 is the machine to desire (and I read it scored high in men magazine) I think surprising things could happen given that exclusives are going to be quite big next year. It's hard to imagine many gamers missing out on god of war 3 for example and other such sony productions available only on their system, unlike xbox360->pc. But more importantly than that I would expect sony holding on to ps3 for much longer, not necessarely because of customer fidelity as many might assume but because it could make sense for them: they invested a lot into the research of different hardware and packed it with bluray which it didn't really need now. Seeing how that was a miss up to now because of customers not willing to pay higher than a certain price no matter the "value" it makes sense to hang on to the system longer: even though competitors will have newer machines they could get away with it seeing how historically often the cheapest/least features machine won out. I'm not saying this will be the case for sure. I'm not a sony fanboy no matter what, even though i love my ps2 experience, all I'm saying is that this makes business sense to me. You don't go inventing a new hardware platform that everybody complains is hard to program and forcing "future proof" bluray that people don't want because of price just to suddenly drop them. So my stab at guesstimating the future is that we may have to ajdust the whole "hardware generation" concept a bit: I'd guess (if they can calm the shareholders not to panic.. if that's how it works?)they'll stick it out through thick and thin until ps3 becomes the new low-end platform. And i think that is actually do-able, not only because of the arguably powerful-buthard-to-use hardware and bluray but also because more and more services can be moved to online oriented experiences where the console is more like a terminal. This also might be backed up by their interest in MMOs which make increasing sense only on a widespread long lived system.
I saw one of those spots during the Suns & Sonics last night. I thought it was the best ad they have comeup with so far in the current generation, and that Sony has learned the hard way that they could not rely on the power of the PS brand name alone for success. I see them gaining some ground in the console wars, but I don't see them ever digging out of 3rd place, at least not in this generation's cycle.
PSOne games are finally about to arrive in mass on PS3, at least for NOV, 9 new PSOne games will be coming to PSN. There's also a massive amount of PSN content besides those games coming in NOV. Full list here & highlights for DEC content.
@kspraydad, It was a graph used by Nintendo President Iwata in his corporate presentation a few days ago. This thread in NeoGAF has some sort of analysis on the chart presented.
I'm pretty sure most videogaming companies are able to get very accurate sales numbers from whatever data gathering body in Europe.
I felt the same way naturally just because the source was from Nintendo, and I'm loathe to trust the validity of sales data directly from any of these companies.
My only guess for why a huge spike would be the increased production and the drop off in Japan may mean increased shipments to Europe and the US, if those numbers are accurate.
One thing to keep in mind is VGChartz also shows an increase over the past two weeks, in both the US and Europe.
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