DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

The 360 has already exceeded 10m console sales, surpassing its targets. Who believed that would happen ?

The mainstream users will only come into play when the console is a reachable price. PS3 is showing no signs of being anywhere near this bracket for quite some time. Until then they will be continuing to buy Xbox as they are now.

Singstar and Buzz only arrived on the PS2 scene very recently when interest in the PS2 was starting to wane. With Guitar Hero about to be launched for 360, expect more soon. An eyetoy equivalent is already available in the form of the Live Vision camera.

I too want them both to suceed, but at the moment I don't hear anything from Sony to make me think they're ahead of the game.

TopBanana

PS3 vs Wii

May not be work safe

PS3 vs. Wii - Google Video

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I have neither console. I will be buying a 360 sometime this year though. I have mates who wont consider the 360... or wouldn't have. They're changing their minds now. They are PS people purely down tot he fact they've just always has a PS. The thing that I think will swing it is when they go to buy a console and they have to put their hand in their pockets. £400+ is going to make a lot of people think long and hard.

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Same here Sti.
I have a mate that if you cut him in two he'd have Sony printed on the inside but even he's considering a 360

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Same here, friends who also don't care what difference between 1080i and 1080p is, friends who are PlayStation through and through, who slate the Xbox at every opportunity . . . friends who are now buying into Xbox360.

Edcase

I think you'll find they have 'shipped' 10m not sold. Until very recently the sales curve for 360 was actually less than at the same period in the Xbox 1 lifecycle!

It will undoubtedly be a closer run thing this generation, and 360 undoubtedly has the upper hand in several areas most notably Live, however as I say there are tens of millions of consumers out there who simply don't even know another console exists, and wouldn't care either way if they did.

The wild card of course is the format war. With BluRay getting so much major studio support, PS3 sales may be helped in the same way that DVD capability helped PS2.

Of course, if the opposite happens, it could quite literally bury them.

Edcase

Actually the single biggest problem for Sony IMHO is not consumers, its developers.

Sony started off with amazing developer support, but over recent years they have become increasingly arrogant, whilst Microsoft have turned on the charm and have undoubtedly the best developer support the industry has ever seen. Gears of War certainly wouldn't be the game it is without considerable support from Xbox.

However, Sony is more than aware of all of this and is working very hard to address everything, particularly interdepartmental communication. At the end of the day with 360 and PS3 increasingly being used as the media Centre, don't forget Sony Pictures and Sony Music. Microsoft doesn't own any original entertainment content outside of games, which gives Sony a significant advantage once they get their ducks in a row.

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

According to nexgenwars 10,096,437 360's have been sold.

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

I think another thing to factor in is Windows Vista and Live Anywhere. The 360 will have the potential to integrate with millions of PC's in virtually every household and even with peoples mobile phones. Its not just about kids in front of TV's any more, the market is blown wide open.

Iain Young

Plus most movie studios that once claimed to be blu-ray only are now producing on both formats, (or are seriously considering doing so). So even that might not be a huge contributing factor in the PS3 favour...

Edcase

I'm sensing some defensive 360 owners...

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

LOL I really want the PS3 to be great, and was hoping that you'd come back with some great info to convince me

Edcase

Unfortunately there is only so much I can say without crossing the boundaries of confidentiality

Iain Young

Not at all. Just pointing out that the 360 is not an also-ran this time around.

I would really like a PS3 when they eventually arrive in the UK and when there are some games worth getting for it. Neither of which is the case at the moment...

Edcase

Trust me I don't need that pointing out, certainly none of my comments on this thread say that. In fact I was actually defending PS3 for the same reason as many people seem to have now written off PS3 as the also-ran, which is pure comedy (frankly even Gabe's comments are simple headline grabbing and no doubt some behind-the-scenes positioning on future titles, and possibly even steam integration. Epic is another company who switches public allegiance like the wind for similar reasons.)

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

In which case, I'll contine to believe that Sony have lost the plot

Hanslow

And I've had my faith restored that it'll be good

Healthy competition is good, so let's hope it makes more than a ripple in the gaming world.

RRH

I was playing F1 on a PS3 on saturday, and was absolutely stunned by the whole experience- it was bloody marvellous!

Iain Young

Is it better than the previous F1 games on the PS2 in terms of gameplay? I was very unimpressed by those, (it was basically a waste of a license).

Come back Geoff Crammond, all is forgiven

RRH

I don't remember the PS2 variant that well tbh Iain, so I'm not really in a position to comment.

The PS3 version has a massive number of variables and adjustments, and the visual effect when racing in the wet are astounding- the rain hitting the 'camera' in the over-cockpit view is simply stunning.

I usually get quite bored playing racing games after about 15 minutes, but I was still playing this after an hour- but that may have been because I had a guy feeding me free Budweiser. Strangely my driving was improving....

Edcase

It does look great, more than can be said of some of the other launch titles like RR7.

Having said that I was playing a beta build of another forthcoming sports title for PS3 over the weekend and it was truly stunning, certainly the best thing I have seen so far.

I think probably the most amazing looking sports game on 360 at the moment is NBA 2K7, incredible attention to detail.

ScoobyJawa

So what about before the PS1 then? These same people you talk of only knew of Sega and Nintendo, to them nothing else existed - only hardcore gamers knew the other more out there machines. Yet somehow these people started buying the PS over Sega/Nintendo. What makes you think that won't happen again...........?

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

In that case it was SONY and at the time they were kings of the elctronics world. MS are one of the few companies that could have come to the table so late and afford to get a foothold in the market as they did with the Xbox.

Edcase

As said above, it was because they were Sony, because it was cd-based, because they had some great early titles like Wipeout and targeted their marketing clearly and effectively at the post-club 'lifestyle' market initially, rather than hardcore gamers.

spectrum48k

I wouldn't pay much attention to the whole brand loyalty philosophy in this particular arena. History has taught us, that as the videogame buying public goes, we're a fickle bunch. The landscape is full of the charred remains of bombed machines that didn't match up to their ancestors...

Cast your mind back to the Atari 2600 VCS which had totaly dominance at the end of the 70's and start of the 80's. They got complacent with the successor, the 7800, nobody hardly bought it and the public moved elsewhere.

Sinclair Spectrum > Sinclari QL - bombed
Sega Megadrive > Sega Saturn bombed
Even Nintendo got their fingers burnt with SNES > Nintendo64

Yeah, PS1 > PS2 was a huge success, but I don't think you'd put that mainly down to brand loyalty - it was more to do with lack of alternative. Hats off to Sony for having the right product at the right time.

Edcase

Trust me, we spend huge sums of money on our own research and buying in the rest of the third party research. The demographic of the 'average' gamer now compared with your 'historic' examples are night and day. That is due to Sony and only Sony, and a large part of that audience buy because its Sony, and now because its 'PlayStation'. For those people, nothing else really matters.

Iain Young

Only time will tell

Edcase

They have already stated a faster 0-1m than PS1 or PS2. If they hit their target of 6m by March I'll be more impressed

cottonfoo

Sinclair's QL wasn't aimed at the same market as the 16/48/128K models anyway, not a good comparison.

Iain Young

Of course it could be argued that the genral world population is larger now than when the ps1/2 were released, and of that population, a higher proportion is interested in gaming than in the previous launches. So I would expect sales of all machines (regardless of platform) to sell more than they did 7-10 years ago.

You can make statistics prove anything you want, and 87.465783% of them are made up on the spot