It looks like Sony is screwing up again.
Facing strong competition from Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people )’s Wii, Sony blundered strategically by cutting the price of PlayStation3 by 20% before the consoles went on sale in November last year. Yuhara admitted Sony had underestimated the startup costs of it.
"In the PS3 business, production was very tight, but we knew the market wouldn't wait," Yuhara said. He added that the price cut was aimed at getting the machine a strong debut.
I mean why did they cut the price on the thing right out of the gate like that? I guess they were worried that people would go for the Wii in large numbers since it was quite a bit cheaper then the PS3. This is a very interesting fact though:
Nonetheless, at the end of December, Sony only sold 687,300 units of PS3 in US since its launch while Nintendo shipped 1.1 million sets of Wii and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) sold 4.5 million units of Xbox 360 in the States, according to research house NPD.
This low amount of of PS3s sold would trouble me if I were Sony. It looks like both the Wii and the Xbox360 trounced them in this crucial holiday season. You could chalk this up to just having more Wiis and Xbox360s around for consumers to buy. I know lots of people that went with the Xbox360 instead of the PS3 since they didn't want to wait in some long line or get robbed or beaten for it.
In any case, it seems that the Wii was the big winner this holiday season. They sold 1.1 million in the US and 3.2 million in Japan. That is quite an installed base right out of the blocks. Now they need a Super Mario Bros. style category killer and they could have the potential to bury their competition.
No comments:
Post a Comment