14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation 3 is now Slim and costs just 299 dollars. The Xbox 360 Elite recently went down to the same price. The Nintendo Wii is widely expected to be priced at 199 dollars beginning with October. Will these significant changes, executed in a short time frame, influence the market in the long term or will they just matter for a few months? This is the question that big hardware makers seek to answer at the moment.
[ADMARk=1]Aaron Greenberg, who is the director of product management at the Xbox division, has told Eurogamer that, “I don't believe the price cuts that both companies have made will impact the market dynamics too dramatically in the long term. We typically see a month or two of lifts and share adjustments, but then things tend to settle back to roughly the established market ranking.”
The remarks need to be taken into context. Recent reports from retailers are showing the impact of the new, cheaper and slimmer PlayStation 3 is pretty significant, with retailers reporting huge sale increases and with the Sony-made home console having its best ever week on the Japanese market.
Meanwhile, the price reduction, which also brought the Xbox 360 Elite to the 299-dollar price point, seems to have had less of an impact, with most retailers saying that sale increases were not spectacular. Of course, only hard data like the NPD Group sale numbers for September will see how the two consoles, costing pretty much the same at the moment, stack up against each other.
The fact that Microsoft, through Greenberg, is playing down the impact of price cuts and aims to emphasize the long-term performance suggests that the PlayStation 3 might be catching up in terms of sales with the Xbox 360. It just might be that September 2009 will mark the revival of the console war, with the performance of the three big devices changing dramatically.