In a showdown of upcoming superhero movies, it looks like The Dark Knight and Watchmen come out on top, with the Batman sequel one full vote in the lead! The Incredible Hulk movie got absolutely NO love, despite the changes such as Ed Norton playing Bruce Banner, a new look for the cg hulk, and a script promised to fix everything that was wrong with the first. Ironman, Justice League, and Wanted all fell behind, with myself being personally disappointed that the JLA movie seems to be heading towards not involving Brandon Routh and Christian Bale as their respective DC roles. I’ll be reserving most judgements about Ironman until I see it, and for Wanted until a trailer comes out and then we’ll see how it looks.
This week is actually a big week in videogames, a lot of high profile games have either just come out or are coming out soon. Lair finally came out for the PS3, quickly recieving a very surprising poor review from IGN of 4.9 out of 10. Bioshock is out for the 360, and pretty much anyone who can is playing it, while Metroid Prime 3: Corruption seems to be the very first must have title for the Wii since the bundled Wii Sports. The giant gorilla looming just around the corner, September 25th to be exact, is Halo 3 that will definitely help not only the 360’s lasting power for months longer but also encourage a lot of new sales of the system to people who have been holding out simply for this one game.
To take a look at where the consoles stand, check out Video Game Chartz, where you can see that in almost two years the X-Box 360 holds 40.6% of the next-gen market, while in still under a year the Nintendo Wii has gathered 42.5%, and the PS3 sits firmly in the back with 16.9% of the market. This brings us to our poll, with Lair out and floundering, Devil May Cry moved from Playstation exclusive to the X-Box along with several others, Nintendo moving at full speed with little signs of slowing down yet, can the Playstation 3 last? Will Final Fantasy XIII be the next must-have exclusive sure to boost sales? Can it come soon enough to save the system? Will it even be a Playstation exclusive by the time it comes out? Are there other games closer on the horizon which could bolster Sony up to even a third of the market? If Warhawk were in the hype position the Lair has been hogging, would the system be selling more?
[poll=15]
(Note: I’ve kept it as a simple yes / no poll because I really want people to make their best, heartfelt, and definitive guess as to how they feel about the PS3. If you’re very firmly in the ‘maybe’ camp, please gauge whether you’re leaning more toward the positive or negative side of it, or just vote on what you hope happens!)
Eventually, the PS3 will be affordable and will make a comeback. It has to. Otherwise, the Playstation name will go the way of SEGA.
Affordable for the consumer is a relative term, whereas affordable for the producer is something entirely different. Sony launched the system losing money on every console sold, and has subsequently dropped prices, and any further price cuts simply means they lose even more money for EACH system they sell. Games may be where the money is made, but if you don’t sell that many systems you certainly can’t make up the money in game sales.
Another thing to consider is that the price point is not a large issue if the product has appropriate usability. The iPhone launched at $600 and sold like hot cakes, and that’s a much smaller device but it has more functional uses, but fewer entertainment uses. Sony has been shotting themselves in the foot in many ways by continuing to release games for the PS2. If God of War 2 were a PS3 exclusive, they’d have sold more systems but possibly less games.
The PS3 won’t succeed into cutting too deeply into the Wii/360 Market Share. I do think it will improve, but this round of the console wars are over, and Sony is the definitive loser.
“The iPhone launched at $600 and sold like hot cakes”
They’re not so sure of that these days. Speculation is that the price cuts are because it didn’t sell quite as they were hoping. There was a mad rush at the beginning, but then it hit a wall.
It looks like iPhone sales reached “1 million” yesterday, which apparently Apple did not predict to reach until the end of September. They have also announced that they anticipate selling 10 million next year which seems astronomical to me.
source: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6852505
I don’t think it’s so much an issue of catching up, as when Microsoft will drop the 360 and launch a newer, more powerful system (at the same price point. This isn’t a stab at the 360 mind you, just that tech gets better and cheaper over time. If it is sooner than later, and if it supports HD-DVD, they put Sony in a lasting vice grip that won’t be broken. MS may also alienate the consumer by doing that, but when has MS screwing people mattered to sales? Ring of death didnt…
I think, if it is anything, it’s an issue of catching up. The PS3 has less then half as many systems as either Microsoft OR Nintendo, all three combined and Sony has less then a fifth of the market. I see no indication of Microsoft planning on releasing a new system early, as the 360 is still doing very well and will only prolong its life with games like Halo 3 and Devil May Cry coming out soon.
By that point, if the Playstation 3 hasn’t caught up Sony will no doubt drop the system also and move on to a system that might sell better. Either way I don’t think companies like Microsoft or Sony are depending on their video game system or even game sales to succeed, whereas Nintendo is pretty much still focused entirely on the industry, so if they were to do badly it might actually have some effect on the company as a whole.