14 DAY TRIAL // The console war is a very tough battle between the top three manufacturers, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, which try their best at attracting customers and obtaining large profits. Although it seems that across 2008 Nintendo dominated its opposition, the fight for second place was a pretty fierce one.
Despite the fact that, in the competition against Sony, Microsoft gained the upper hand by applying a price cut to its Xbox 360 console, it seems that things are looking up for the PlayStation 3. Even though it had reached an 18 percent drop in November, as correlated to the same time frame in 2007, December 2008 was a pretty good month for the Japanese company and its product.
In the month that kicked off the holiday season, it appears that Sony achieved a massive 130 percent sales increase, as opposed to November. This fact was backed up by internal data from the Japanese company, which also stated that it hoped to continue that strong momentum in 2009 as well, confirming the statements made by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president, David Reeves, who expressed his beliefs that the PS3 would have a great new year.
“Early internal data points to an increase of more than 130 percent of PS3 hardware sales for the holiday season—since Black Friday—and we're also seeing a growth of nearly 40 percent in total PS3 hardware sales for the calendar year. We remain confident this momentum will continue into the new year.”
Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of industry analysts and critics place Sony on a shameful last place, behind Nintendo and Microsoft, this year might be the start of quite a lot of changes for the Japanese console. Let's not forget that a slew of new features will be coming to the PS3, as part of the new “added value” strategy, and, if we are to believe Microsoft and almost everyone else in the gaming industry, except Sony, a price cut might be resorted to in the time to come. All that's left for us to do is to wait and see what predictions are due to come true.