Industry analyst Michael Pachter has meditated on the state of console pricing, consulted his spirit guides, and announced that a drop is due sometime this year. I’m sure the previous year-to-year console price drops were not an informing factor in this otherwise 100% divine revelation.
According to Pachter, the 20 percent decline in the (over-saturated, underwhelmed) music genre and (mostly shovelware) Nintendo software sales were due, at least in part, to “stubborn hardware price points”.
“We believe that sticky price points for the three major consoles triggered a 5 percent overall decline in console hardware unit sales for 2010,” he told IndustryGamers, in response to the December NPD results released last week. “Handhelds performed even worse, with unit sales down 25 percent, contributing to continuing software weakness.”
The December NPDs – which also included information for the entire year – showed a bit of an industry slump, with only the Xbox 360 banging out an improvement on 2009.
Pachter added that the PS3 is probably going to get cheaper first.
“We fully expect each of the three consoles to be offered at lower prices in 2011, with Sony likely leading the way as its manufacturing costs continue to decline. A $50 price cut should be sufficient to drive 5 percent software sales growth; and, coupled with a resurgence in handheld software sales and an easy comparison for music sales, we think that overall software sales growth could hit low double digits in 2011.”
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