DFC Intelligence has some shocking claims to be made. According to them, Xbox 360 has already hit the “downside” of its lifecycle, though some good years left. But does this claim is appropriate even after the advent of Microsoft’s Kinect platform?
Lets eye what DFC have to say on this regard, “Kinect [for the Xbox 360] is definitely an interesting product. At the end of the day, we see Kinect having some appeal to a well-heeled fitness audience. But in terms of changing the overall video game hardware platform market share we see it having a negligible impact.”
“The Xbox 360 clearly needs to diversify beyond the core first-person shooter audience, [yet] Kinect is not designed for the hard-core game consumer. Nevertheless, Microsoft is putting almost all its eggs into Kinect as a way to appeal to the ‘casual’ consumer and expand its user base. Unfortunately, MS is going to struggle to expand beyond its core audience,” DFC said in a note obtained by Industry Gamers.
But TG Daily reported some positive thoughts on this, Ted Pollak, a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research, explained TG Daily how the Xbox 360 was at present on its way to a year and a half of its peak market opportunity.
Ted Pollak explained, “The number of online services, games and peripherals, together with the pricing and styling changes have set the machine up for some solid sales in the coming years. Another thing to consider, which is a recurring theme in my analysis of the current console market, and was a cornerstone of my prediction for Wii’s success, is the worldwide HDTV penetration landscape. People often forget that the vast majority of worldwide households are still using SDTV. Never before has a console generation had to deal with a new television technology and I think this could cause both Microsoft and Sony to extend their lifecycles as much as possible.”
EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich expressed similar sentiments. “The Xbox 360 has had consistent sales levels for the last 3 years whilst maintaining a hardware price point in excess of $250. I don’t believe the Xbox 360 is on a downward slide for the next three years. I believe Microsoft has a goal of maintaining their current sales momentum through 2013, and for the last 3 years they’ve maintained that by packaging additional hardware features, such as a bigger hard-drives and Wi-Fi, without sacrificing top-line pricing. Still the best tried and true strategy for driving hardware sales is pricing, a strategy Microsoft has not often used this cycle, which gives them plenty of additional means to drive hardware sales in the future if sales begin to dip.”
Tags: console, Game, gaming, hard core, hardware platform, kinect, microsoft, Wii, Xbox 360