Sony dropped the price on its PlayStation 3 in July — from $599 to $499 for its 60-gigabyte model — and got a bump in sales, but Nintendo's Wii continued to dominate by posting its largest monthly sales figure of 2007.
There's one reason Wii is winning in the battle of sales among console game machines: price. A large part of the market is bound to be teenagers on allowance. They're going to buy what they can afford (paying less for the console means more $$$ for extra games) or what their parents will buy for them.
I was in the electronics department at Zellers [Canada's Wal-mart wannabe] last week, and overheard a mom and teenage daughter surveying the locked glass case of MP3 players.
Mom: "This one's only $29."
Daughter: "But it's ugly!"
When the parent is paying for something they aren't sure has value, they'll push for the cheapest product -- the one, in their eyes, with the least potential financial drawback. Twenty-nine bucks for an MP3 player? Not a problem; $299 for an iPod -- that's a problem.
A secondary reason for the Wii #1 sales, I believe, is that Nintendo has been successful in positioning the Wii as the healthy alternative. it's is small (must consume fewer of earth's precious resources, right?), white (a color that fits any decor), and has a motion controller that gets kids off the couch (nothing wrong with physical activity, now is there).
When the Wii was first announced, my 20-year-old son pronounced it a loser. (He subsequently bought an XBOX 360 Elite.) But he was wrong: Microsoft is the loser and, in its curious way of not understanding the world, fails to see this.
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