GAMINGtruth

Michael Pachter, Shane Satterfield, N’Gai Croal and Billy Berghammer got together with GameTrailers.com and discussed Microsoft’s chances of taking E3.

It’s pretty intriguing, so have a look!

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There are some very valid points made there, especially with the 360’s mass of shooters in comparison to the rest of the genres. Also, though, there are a lot of things that I don’t necessarily agree with.

It seems like the interview steered more toward a Wii vs everything else debate, which is valid considering the Wii’s controls, but they still haven’t touched the most important reason behind the systems sales numbers: Price.

When you look at the sales of the consoles, the system that sells the most (Wii) is also the cheapest at $250. Middle ground is covered by the 360 at $300-400, and the PS3 sells the least but is the most expensive selling at $600. Of course the Wii is going to grab the more casual gamers due to it’s controls, but the primary reason for the systems not selling up to the numbers they could lies directly on the pricing.

N’Gai Croal brings good points to the table pointing out that Sony has first party companies that have experience since the original Playstation but at the same time, if the system doesn’t drop in price you won’t find many gamers with PS3s to buy those games. The best point overall, in my opinion, is that Microsoft needs to serve up more first-party games from other genres that don’t contain “shooter” in their description.

Personally, I see a ray of light in exclusives like Mass Effect, Alan Wake, Banjo Kazooie, BioShock, Blue Dragon, Fable 2, and many other titles that don’t necessarily fit into the shooter category that might bring the 360 a bit more sales.

A price drop wouldn’t hurt either, but that’s likely going to happen when Sony drops prices. Considering that might happen this fall - or even at E3 if they want to drive sales out of the sub-100k a month it’s been doing currently - the console races are definitely heating up!

If you’ve read my breakdown this far, leave a comment and let me know what your thoughts are. If I’ll do this more often with the Bonus Round segments and maybe even start writing editorials on the subject myself.