Analyst: Xbox 360 to beat Sony PS3 this holiday

Please, Microsoft is going to have to do alot better than that to get people to buy their shoddy console. “Here, heres our Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle for only $200 dollars!” “We’ll just neglect to tell you that it comes without a harddrive, you have to pay for online play that isn’t worth it, and like all other 360 models, EVEN THE NEW ONES, it is susceptible to the Red Ring of Death!” “Would you like to buy an over-priced proprietary harddrive with that, or how about $100 adapter so you can get WiFi which is something the other consoles have out of the box. WHAT A DEAL!”

@ 360 lover…NOT:

While I would agree, that in my mind, the RROD issue is still out there and has really yet to be proven that M$ gives a crap about it. Sure, they’ll throw a billion dollars at it, in the form of extended warranties…but they throw money at the EU all the time to stave off changing any business practices in monopoly lawsuits…and more than a billion, no less. I also agree that the proprietary HDD is a negative. I swapped my PS3′s HDD for a 320g in a matter of a half hour. Easy as pie.

However, I think that the $200 price point, is definitely a magic number in the console market, and the Wi-Fi is only an issue because of the cost for the adapter. Fact is, Wi-Fi connections in households really aren’t standard yet, and I’d be willing to bet that less than a third of the households in America are equipped for that (America being the important one, because it’s MS’ sweet zone….lose US, they lose the war). So, that’s a point that’s easily overlooked in my opinion.

Now, I’d also like to add, that Sony’s lineup for this holiday season, and Q1 2008, is a monster. I would say it’s on par with MS’ Halo 3 holiday lineup, which is good, because right now, if you can wade through the plethora of “360 @ $200″ articles, you’ll notice a few that mention that developers are reaching a peak in what they can do with the 360. And whether that’s true or not, it’s still starting to gain legs in the media…ie people are talking. That kind of negative publicity doesn’t help, especially if there are now folks who believe that a 720 is coming soon. Microsoft may in fact impact their own sales, allowing such rumors to continue, and remember that MS stopped supporting the XB1 after the launch of the 360. So, people might hesitate for several reasons here.

Anyway, I don’t know honestly, I can see pro’s and con’s for either machine right now. Sony’s price point still remains a huge factor for many, imo.

Morne

I don’t know if Microsoft is going to win or not and actually I don’t care. I’m not getting a PS3 until some good games are coming (and no, I don’t see Little Big Planet as a good game). I’m really happy with my Xbox 360, even when it has died on me once. I think this holiday season it’s going to be great for everyone and we’ll have tons of games to play.

Microsoft makes a standard business practice of keeping analysts in its pocket. (Thoroughly documented in the Iowa anti-trust trials.)

My prediction: this analyst will compare sales of the $200 Doesn’t Do Much model Xbox and the top-of-the-line PS3. http://notnews.today.com/?p=63

Despite the problems (i.e. RROD) this price drop will move people to the console. Many people will be willing to take that risk at the sub $200 price.

@Morn

You’ll be surprised to actually how many people have A Wi-Fi connection. My PSP picks up about 6 different connctions from my house and we know the radius isn’t large. If I go around the corner, I pick up a load more. This however could be down to BT. In the UK a high percentage are with BT phone lines and the majority of users if wanting broadband will more than likely use BT broadband. This will get them the BT hub, this is for the cordless phone but also for wireless internet. So a huge amount of wireless internet users in the UK, shame about the speeds though.

For me I couldn’t have the arcade bundle, its not really a bundle if nothing comes with it. Why call it xbox 360 arcade when you couldn’t download any arcade games from live without a hard drive. Many people must have bought the arcade 360 or when it was just called the core 360 and thought to themselves that they’ve been ripped off.

ps3 sold more units last year, probably do the same this year. 360 is starting to look like a dated console and doesn’t have the better features built in, bearing in mind it’s going to be dads buying this ‘for the kids’ -ahem- they are going to get themselves the best system around. i already have a ps3 boosted to 320Gb and am thinking of getting myself a 360Elite for stuff like Halo Wars and some decent rpgs, which the ps3 is lacking. that way i won’t care if anything is exclusive