Certain things may slip under the radar and go unnoticed
-While shipment figures can be misleading in the short-term, the PS3 is the most shipped console during the last biennium (this is a significant amount of time), despite its terrible performance in the largest video game market in the world.
Code:
(Unit: Million)
Global Shipments US NPD
(2010+2011) (2010+2011)
PS3 28.5 (14.4 + 14.1) 8.8 (4.3 + 4.5)
Wii 27.52 (17.2 + 10.32) 11.6 (7.1 + 4.5)
360 27.0 (12.1 + 14.9) 14.1 (6.8 + 7.3)
That means the long-term effects of the PS3 price cuts outside America resemble those found in previous PlayStation consoles.Sony has good reasons to think that the PS3 is going to be huge in the rest of the world, particularly in the PAL markets, where the console hasn't even turned five years-old yet or reached key price points.Sony is in a great position to offset partially the inevitable sales decline in the mature markets.And there's no more mature market in this console cycle than the US video game market.
-After losing billions of dollars, the PlayStation business has been making money since October 2009.
The game business has recorded a profit for the last three quarters in a row
(July 30, 2010)
Sony F1Q10 Earnings Call Transcript (Seeking Alpha)
Its flagship console has good momentum,good hardware sales and the most important thing: strong software sales.The next step is to make the PS3 more affordable and earn more money.The guys who said 249 instead of 199 several months ago aren't willing to launch or show a new shiny box anytime soon:extract profits from the PS3 and raise the new born baby PS Vita are Sony's top priorities for now.
At some point the PS3 will become a budget console, targeted to kids,casual gamers and the emerging markets: then Sony will be ready. So, it'll be FY 2014/15. They will not arrive significantly later than Microsoft. If Sony has a good product reasonably priced, it will sell well. Having said that,America may be a lost cause for Sony.