In advance of the official release of the NPD software and hardware sales results for December in the US, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter has released his preview, including an expectation that the PlayStation 3 will have been hugely outsold by the Xbox 360.
The forecasts from the GLS stocks would definitely confirm that the prediction market believes this generation of consoles will be around for much longer to accumulate a much larger install base. The PS3 GLS stock seems to assume the PS3 will be selling for 10 years.
Why would you want a combo HD-DVD drive at this point? There is no HD-DVD studio content in production at this point.
Or are you saying you would have liked MSFT to offer a combo drive back when they had an HD-DVD add on? I assume the main reason for this was that MSFT was in the HD-DVD group (HD-DVD used MSFT software and so it earned royalties to my understanding) while MSFT had no IP in Blu-Ray at all so pushing the technology was not in their interest.
I think you are pointing out an important difference between DVD and Blu-ray. When DVD emerged, consumers benefited from an immediate improvement to their SDTV experience over VHS.
For consumers who don't have HDTVs, a Blu-ray player does not offer them any immediate value.
Many consumers do have HDTVs today, but many of them also have not been used to HDTV signals. I know many people who own HDTVs but don't have HDTV cable service, Direct TV, or HD OTA. However, once people see HDTV service, such as watching a sports game, they clearly see the benefit of 720p or 1080p content over SDTV. Gamers already see that today. Given the demand we've seen for HD sports, television programming, and video games, it makes sense that movies will eventually catch up as well.
Anecdotally, I do have many friends who buy Blu-ray movies. After watching Blu-ray, now some of them will only watch a movie if it's on Blu-ray. Afterall, who still wants to watch the Super Bowl on SDTV? EVERYONE prefers to watch it on HD.
@welshbloke, "When you look at consumers, they are going to be more value-conscious," Bach added.
If the customer are really, really value conscious, Mirosoft (and Sony) should consider starting charging US$ 50 for X360 (and PS3 games), like Wii's. Of course, I realize that development cost for X360 (and PS3) games are higher than Wii (mostly), but the customer (especially non-hardcore) will look at the price, and say : Why don't we buy the cheaper priced one, instead of the higher priced one.
If customer buy 10 games at $10 cheaper each, they can afford to buy accessories/consoles that are $100 more expensive.
Microsoft coy on new Xbox plans The president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, Robbie Bach, has refused to confirm that the company is developing a new console, but did say that the challenges for a new platform are harder than previously - and that the Xbox 360 is likely to be around for longer than the original Xbox.
"Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient," Bach told The Mercury News. "The life cycle for this generation of consoles - and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PlayStation 3 as well - is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations."
The original Xbox was released in 2001, with the Xbox 360 going on sale in 2005 - but with no official word on new hardware plans as yet, it looks unlikely that anything new will see the light of day until at least 2011, while Sony has often talked of a ten-year life cycle for the PlayStation 3.
But if the current economic climate continues for a long period of time those dates might be pushed back even further, with consumers unlikely to want to spend significant amounts of money on new hardware and software.
"When you look at consumers, they are going to be more value-conscious," Bach added. "We want to make sure that as the economy does start to recover, that we're positioned well."
@welshbloke, i do believe people have gotten to the mindset of longer hardware, more software... hardware becoming a platform of delivery. still, ms has gained a lot by pushing for fast and i think they'll still try to do it again... so i expect them to extend as long as possible by any means with the constraint of still being at least 1 year out before sony and no more than 2 behind the new nintendo.
So anybody actually believe MS will extend this cycle? I personally do not see a reason why they should not do anything but extend, that is assuming Sony stick to the 10 year plan.
Not so sure if fewer would upgrade. Maybe this is the conclusion based on the PS2 market and the Wii adoption.
Microsoft Corp. will rely on its Xbox 360 game console for longer than the previous version because it’s getting harder to get consumers to upgrade, the head of the company’s entertainment unit said.
The software maker will focus on improving the Xbox’s games and features rather than rushing to introduce a new model, President Robbie Bach said Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Xbox 360 started selling in 2005, replacing the original Xbox, which debuted in 2001.
Once everyone get an hd tv, which will greatly increase marketshare are price drops in next 2 years, Blu-ray sales will skyrocket and the price of BR DVD will come down.
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