Sony is No Competition:
At last year’s show, Don A. Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, had such confidence in the Xbox 360’s success over Sony that he issued the following statement: “I’m so confident in our momentum and our bright future that I’m willing to declare here today that the Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than the Playstation 3.” With the high price tag and diminishing number of console exclusives, Sony’s console has so far been outsold by the Xbox 360. But, with Sony’s projected 10 year lifecycle for the Playstation 3 compared to the unknown one for the 360, it will be hard to tell exactly how true Mattrick’s prediction is. That is, if there is ever a point where the Playstation 3 starts outselling the Xbox 360 on a regular basis.
Accuracy: 70%
What’s coming this year?: I’m not sure there will be a whole lot of bold claims like this one coming from Microsoft’s PR people. The console is doing fine, and they are still moving more units that Sony regularly, but the Playstation 3 seems to have gained some ground lately, and it is also becoming more and more apparent that Blu-ray will allow Sony to produce better games that simply cannot be made for the Xbox 360 and its plain old DVDs. Making some sort of claim about Xbox being better than the Playstation 3 from any perspective besides software would be a mistake for Microsoft. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they tried to distance themselves from claims made at last year’s show.
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