Analyst: Underwhelming PS3 and 360 Sales May Force Price Cuts

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Analyst: Underwhelming PS3 and 360 Sales May Force Price Cuts
Although the PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware could still see a boost in May, both platforms didn't realize much in the way of a GTA boost during April. Jesse Divnich believes MS and Sony may be pressured into dropping prices.
Posted by James Brightman on Friday, May 16, 2008


In the wake of the April video game sales data, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich commented on what was admittedly even a surprise to NPD analyst Anita Frazier – that the hardware sales for both Xbox 360 and PS3 failed to reach 200K units during a month in which GTA IV was supposed to have driven console sales.

"This would...be the first time that Xbox 360 sales dipped below 200K since July 2007, which ended up resulting in an Xbox 360 price drop the following month (August 2007). It wouldn't be wrong to assume that Microsoft might follow a similar strategy as last year given that the Xbox 360 has dropped below the 50,000 units a week sold threshold mark," remarked Divnich.

He continued, "Last month I stated that it is likely that both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 have saturated their market potential at their current price points; April's results only reinforces that theory. Of course, it might be a little too soon to speculate that we can expect a price drop in the coming weeks or additional hardware SKUs (An Xbox 360 with Blu-ray capability) in the coming month, but if May's hardware sales drop below the 50,000 units sold a week threshold, we can definitely expect something in terms of a change in strategy from both Microsoft and Sony."

That said, Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian doesn't believe a PS3 price cut is too likely this year.