Mike Bantick
Monday, 19 November 2007 16:13
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
All the analyst talk is about who will win the important 2007 holiday sales, Nintendo Wii or Sony PlayStation 3. Can it really be all over for the Xbox 360?
It was 37 degrees Celsius here in Melbourne Australia today as we, unlike most of the populated world, warm up for Christmas.
Likewise this is the hottest period for gaming console manufacturers as we see out the first full year of the so-called next-generation in console gaming. I guess after a year (longer in the case of Microsoft's Xbox 360) it is time we called it current-gen.
What a golden year it has been for video gaming in general, developers have begun to push the envelope technologically as they come to grips with the new hardware. Though, drifting onto the PC gaming front for a moment, I am yet to see a hardware rig that can handle Crytek's new CPU burner Crysis in its full Direct X 10 glory, might need to wait until next year for that.
Home game consoles hooked up to the Net have opened development up, with Xbox LIVE continuing to flourish, with Arcade and Marketplace the pre-eminent way to shop online for console content.
Sony, will catch up next year with
Play TV and PlayStation Home set to be launched. Meanwhile Nintendo's Virtual Console provides a nice efficient nostalgic doorway to past gaming memories.
Okay, so now we head into the holiday season, great! Time to head down to the beach, right? No say the gaming companies, time to think about a new gaming console for those long winter nights ahead (sorry northern hemisphere folk).
The Sony PlayStation 3 has built up some momentum of late, finally reducing that wallet breaking price tag, and in so doing snagging a fair amount of market share.
In fact in Japan this past week the PS3 trebled its normal sales volumes, to pull ahead of the Nintendo Wii which is suffering from somewhat of a homeland slide in sales.
Japanese Sales for week ending Nov 11
1. Nintendo DS: 78,884
2. PlayStation Portable: 58,964
3. PlayStation 3: 55,924
4. Nintendo Wii: 34,456
5. PlayStation 2: 9043
6. Xbox 360: 5817
What does this mean for the up-to-now dominant Nintendo Wii - onto page 2.
