[Elandyll]

Here is a nice article about the fight awaited at the end of the year in Europe (and specifically France) between the three main consoles. Blu Ray is mentionned.
Personally, I love the 10 million PS3 (1 year) vs 13 million Xbox (2 years) number

http://www.france24.com/france24Publ...soft-noel.html

The war of the 3 consoles will be played at Xmas.

For the first time, the new videogame consoles of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will fight durign the Xmas period, huge for the revenue of these companies. What is at Stake? To conquer your living room.

To find a space under your Xmas tree, anything goes.
The unending and invisible war between the Playstation 3 of Sony, the Xbox 360 of Microsoft and the Wii of Nintendo should reach its peak during this extremely important period at the end of the year, that can represent up to 25 to 30% of the REvenue of the CE makers.

For Georges fornay, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment France, "The Playstation 3 "pulls the market toward the top" and is converting experimented gamers to high definition and that will pull the growth of this sector for consumer electronics and entertainement for the next 5 to 10 years. The Playstation 2 "attacks the market at its low end" to attract new gamers with a very aggressive price at 129€". The PS2 has the record of console sales with more than 100 million units sold since it launched in 2000.


The Xbox 360 of Microsoft could be compared to a "diesel".
First of the new generation consoles launched at the end of 2005, it benefits mostly from the very popular "Xbox Live". This option let gamers fight each other online through the internet and has already seduced 70% of the Xbox owners, accoridng to Microsoft.

Last, Nintendo took the industry by surprise with its Wii. By operating a radical change of strategy, this console ignores the race for the best performances to propose a new wa y to play. By making the videogame a true physical activity, the Japanese maker opened a whole new market to itself.

The High Definition War

Since Microsoft launched its Xbox in the arena of console makers in 2001, the technological competition with the Playstation 2 of Sony was direct. If both consoles can read DVDs, the Xbox proposes for the first time an intenral Hard Drive andthe ability to connect sveral players through the internet.

The passage to the current generation of consoles, the seventh, sees the technological battle between Microsoft and Sony take a new turn. With the arrival of "High Definition" (HD), which is to say a better digital resolution of the video picture, each builder is getting away from the DVD format, doomed to disappear, to push its own HD format. The Xbox 360 of Microsoft supports the HD DVD while the Playstation 3 of Sony offers a blu Ray Disc format player.


Wii: The Nintendo revival

Nintendo, oldest current maker, found itself in difficulty since the release of the Playstation in 1994. The Maker has seen the revenue from its consoles getting lower for each generation, to reach the bottom with its GameCube released in 2001. The console, technically made obsolete by its competitors and disliked by sofware makers, will be victim of the hegemony of the Playstation 2.

Not having the financial resources of Microsoft or Sony to compete in this Technological war, Nintendo makes the bet to release an original game system. Their last console, named Wii, combines a simple design to a new way of playing video games, a strategy that is not without links with the one Apple followed in its line of products very stylish and simple to use. Rather than offer a gamepad traditionnally stuffed with buttons, the Wii detects the movemements of the player in space through a series of detectors.
A revolution that let Nintendo touch a new market until then left alone: people who did not play videogames.

Where the Xobx 360 and the Playstation 3 aim at a public made of "hardcore gamers", which means veteran players knowledgeable with technology, the Wii is touching a larger public, compensating the absence of a HD format with its innovating game system.

Clash of the Titans

The fight promises to be tough and all three sides have prepared their numbers. According to the maker numbers, the Xbox 360 wassold to more than 13 million units in the world since its lauch 2 years aggo.
The Wii did the same, but only in one year. Last, The playstation 3, which went through a tough start, seems to have caught up with 10 million units on the market notably thanks to a modification of its price.

In the fight for the consumer, price is essential. Burdened by the cost of futur technologies, the consoles of both Microsoft and Sony are at prices that can be detrimental for a part of the buyers. The problem was big in particular for Sony. Not seeing its sales go up since the late launch of the PS3 and facing the huge success of the Wii, the maker had no choice but to lower its prices. In October 2007 the price of the console is reduced by 20%, going from 499€ to 399€ for the base model. A big sacrifice considering that the inital price of the console was not covering its manufacturing cost.

Not wanting to let Sony benefit from this marketing argument, Microsoft anticipated by lowering the price of its own consoles.

There again, the Nintendo Wii found a good position. This is the cheapest new generation console on the market. In Europe, it is being sold 249€ since its launch in 2006, while the first price of a Xbox 360, launched in 2005, is 279€ (not including the HD DVD player, sold separately) and the Playstation 3, launched in Europe in March 2007, 399€.

On the Retail side, Stores are getting ready to face the Xmas period.
At Virgin Megastore, they now have "Buffer stocks" that will let them re-stock rapidly a Store that would have been emptied. Adn the demand will be large according to Stephane Loirat, director of Software Products and Digital Accesories at Virgin. "The presence ofthe Playstation 3 this year brings more dynamism to a market that is growing in importance" he explains. If he didn't want to reveal any numbers, he certifies that "the growth of the videogame market is so big that it now is measured in equal terms with the Music and Video one".