Amazon's Botched Sale Was 360 Launch 2.0?

Say that again?

On a pure traffic volume basis, the 360 generated more online interest on the 23rd, than either the Playstation 3 or Wii commanded on their respective launch days, making one thing clear — the Amazon promotion was the Xbox 360’s Launch 2.0.

-- Compete Blog » Blog Archive » Xbox 360 Launch 2.0 (via Next Gen)

This only make sense if the analyst means "once again, so few 360's were offered for such a brief period of time that it gave the illusion that there was much demand." I mean, the thing was discounted 66%. Likewise brilliant commentary would include "if the PlayStation 3 was cheaper than the 360, it would sell like hotcakes" and "if the Nintendo DS were included in cereal boxes, Sony wouldn't bother with the PSP."

Sadly, the analysis is saying "the 360 had just as much demand as the other guys during their launch" - based solely on a lot of people crashing a server to try and win a one time deal that lasted only a few minutes. The analysis even ignores its own graph which clearly shows the 360 dropping off in online interest significantly after the deal and well below the other consoles.

So yeah, a lot of people online wanted to get a really cheap 360. $100 is a very attractive price point for any console - and many were probably not considering the $100-$200 they'd have to plunk down to add the basics like a hard drive, wifi, extra controller and a couple games.

But I also went and tried GameFly's daily free Wii give-a-way and there's no indication that such sweepstakes, even though it's essentially the same thing except functional, is tabulated in this statement.

Silly analysis about a silly sales event.



tagged: game, gaming