September 1st.

Well as the first official post about what this site will be about is here. What a big one too.

The war between the PS2 and Xbox was a very one sided affair.
With PS2 selling through 125 million units through 9 years on the market vs the 24 million units the original Xbox in 4 years.

The PS2 is still going, but is obviously dying. 9 years on the market tends to do that to a gaming platform. It was a very monstrous ride. Major blockbuster seemed to be released every month for a few years. It wasn't a good time for the Xbox console, but things changed when the current gen was started.

E3 2005. A time I'm sure Sony would want to forget. Maybe not as much as Kaz Hirai wanting to forget E3 06, but that's for a different time. E3 2005 marked the unveiling of the PS2 predecessor, the PLAYSTATION 3.

It was a fun time. Til the conference had ended and the media started to analyse all the trailers from the event that Sony showed to hype up the PS3's announcement.

As it was found out. All those trailers were pre-rendered. Not using actual game engines. Game code. Nothing that really had anything to do with what the console was even really capable of accomplishing. (we are getting close now, but we're also 2 and a half years into the life of the PS3).

Anyway. Let's fast forward to this year. Major games have been released in 2009. Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV, Killzone 2, inFAMOUS and Prototype to name a few retail releases this year.

For the most part the 360 has been beating the sales of the PS3. Last year the PS3 was outselling the 360, but that was short lived. Mainly due to the 360 price cut and the lack of one on the PS3 side in the second half of the year. PS3 finished the holiday in last. Going against the 360 price cut across the board in September and the Wii being crack.

Things seemed like Sony would drop the price of the PS3 around the time of Killzone 2 and Street Fighter IV. Didn't happen. Some started thinking that it would be around the release of Resident Evil 5. Again didn't happen. So then the rumors started swirling that it would be at E3. Nope. Rumors started spinning again, but people started to not believe that it was going to happen. 2 months after E3 09 (at Gamescom in Germany) Sony finally pulled the trigger. They announced the also rumored Slimline PS3. On the back of a $100 price cut when the model hit, but to assist retailers to move inventory out. They announced that the current models on the market would be dropping $100 as well. The 80gig going to $299 and the 160gig going to $399. Sony got alot of press about it and retailers had the signs and ads up just minutes after the announcement. In addition to that many gaming centered sites like Joystiq and IGN got shippments of the console within minutes of the announcements and even the hardware marketing teams within Sony started calling and releasing videos for the price drop/Slim model announcement to get the word out there very fast.

Now a few days later more rumored stuff became confirmed. The Xbox 360 pro model is discontinued and replaced with the Elite model. Now the Elite model was to be discontinued awhile back. It was turned into a limited edition of the 360 line. Of course now it's replacing the Pro model. Not just in shelf space. It's also taking the $299 price tag. This taking effect on September 1st. The same day that the PS3 Slim hits all retailers in North America and Europe. Japan gets it on September 3rd. Not that it's going to hurt PS3 sales by not being the same day as the other 2 major markets.

So what does this mean? Well this is the starting point of real competition. Both the PS3 and 360 Elite are $299. Starting on the same day. Now Sony still has a lot of ground to make up. They are 8 million units behind the 360 currently. The PS3 Slim/price drop I think will benefit the PS3 much more than this move by Microsoft.

I think Microsoft acted out of desperation to counter Sony's news. Sony is still going to be losing money til all the old "phat" models are sold. The Slim does cost 70% less to make than the previous manufactoring setup, but they also dropped the the price $100. So they aren't making that much profit on the Slim. Sony has lost billions of dollars on the previous setup. So while Sony will actually make profit off the PS3 Slim now. They would have made alot of profit off the Slim had they kept the $399 price tag, but that would just destroy any chance of Sony turning anything around. It would boost sales, but very minimally. At least in my opinion. So with the PS3 Slim/price drop. Sony has re-invigorated the system. Going to sites like VGChartz.com you can see that many people are super excited about the news from Sony and are buying the current 80 gig/160 gig or they are pre-ordering the Slim.

Whatever you're gaming preference is. This is the best time to be a gamer. Sony and Microsoft are now price equal. They are in the trenches and this "console war" has heated back up. September 1st the PS3 Slim launches everywhere in North America and Europe. At the same time the Elite 360 model will also drop to $299. So this will be a super fun time.