Nintendo Wii might be ruling on the video-game console market, with its 6.3 million user base in the U.S. alone, but Sony Corp. has been long time planning for a change, and that change came in December last year, when sales climbed in Europe as the PS3 became available at cheaper rates. However, is this strategy enough to outrun Sony’s competitors? Analysts are not very convinced that should do it.

The initial goal of Sony Corp. was to reach 11 million PS3 sales by the end of March 2008, after one year with Nintendo Wii’s name on top of every chart. That however was not exactly an easy objective, considering that the PlayStation 3 has been crushed by Wii sales all throughout the past year. All in all, it was a good strategy for Sony, as it managed to get closer to its competitors after the cheapest version on PS3 was launched in November 2007.

Where will Sony be in the year to come on the game console market as opposed to his rivals? Well, Sony is working hard on bringing back the “wow factor”, and innovation is the word to describe its future plans. As everything depends on the success of PS3 sales, Sony’s strategy is mainly based on that, and the November 2007 sales came to prove it, as the PS3 outran Wii in Japan for the first time and almost doublet its market share in the United States.

“It’s an industry consensus that PS3 sales will fall short of the target,” said Mitshuro Osawa, analyst with Mihuzo Investors Securities Co. to Bloomberg. The 8 million PS3 sales analysts expect before the end of March 2008 will account for less than half of the Wii sales that are expected to reach 19 million, but will come closer to the Xbox 360 console sales, which were estimated to 9.1 million. What’s the next step? The Sony president hasn’t decided yet (Bloomberg): “We haven’t made any conclusion whether we have to give it up. It depends on how aggressively dealers buy our PS3 invenstory.”