Jesse Divnich predictions: Of Solid Snake, the PS3, and Xbox 360 price cuts

Aside from us, it appears that a couple of other known game industry analysts have gotten a whiff of NPD’s sales report for last month. Jesse Divnich has recently stated his own opinions, which delves into how Metal Gear Solid 4 may give the PS3 its big break, and a possible price cut from Microsoft‘s camp. Further details are available in the full article.

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich recently added his two cents with regards to the NPD group’s video game sales report for last May. Divnich commented regarding the Sony PlayStation 3, which he noted experienced a 150 percent increase in sales as compared to last year, and even managed to outsell Microsoft‘s Xbox 360.

He also noted that one strong driver for PS3 sales for this June would be the release of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which was exclusive to the console. As Divnich explained, PS3-exclusive releases tend to sell 45 percent more during their run, as compared to multi-platform releases on the same console, like say, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 4.

With regards to the Xbox 360, Divnich predicted that Microsoft might be planning either some sort of price cut for their Xbox 360 by this year’s E3 in July or a new hardware SKU with new features, possibly even both. Sony in turn was expected to counter with their own plan within two months of MS’ own price cut. That is, if they do announce one.

Divnich also touched off on the matter of the PSP, which had enjoyed increased sales at the start of 2008, only to hit another slump last May:

For the first time this year, PSP year-over-year sales were in the negative at 17 percent decrease. This trend will likely continue, as we do not see any significant PSP titles in the short-term pipeline that could drive hardware sales in Sony’s favor.

Via GameDaily