The original PS3 was often criticized for being bulky beast than ran hot, noisy and cost more than any other console in the market, the PS3 Slim fixes all those shortcomings – it’s 33% smaller, runs quieter, cooler and goes for only USD299.

Indeed the lower price point puts the PS3 back in the race as the ultimate gaming console. It’s also one of the cheapest Blu-ray players in the market, especially when you consider that it comes with all the features that only more expensive Blu-ray players have, such as BD-Live connectivity and picture-in-picture, amongst others.

Product Features

Although October sales of Nintendo’s Wii console dropped 36 percent compared with the same period last year, company executives expect robust sales in the holiday season.

“We’ll have a very strong November and December,” Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president, predicted.

Mr. Fils-Aime said in a telephone interview that Wii sales are in line with expectations at this point in the product’s life cycle. (It was introduced in November 2006.) Nintendo’s sales were particularly strong in October 2008, when it sold 803,000 units. He said, “The third year is always the strongest.” Mr. Fils-Aime said he was encouraged by an 80 percent increase in weekly sales since the price of the console was lowered in September to $200, from $250.

Nintendo remained the leading console maker in October, with 506,900 Wii units sold in the United States, the NPD Group, a market research firm, said Thursday. Sony’s PlayStation 3 was the second-biggest seller, with 320,600 units, while Xbox 360 sales were 249,700.

“You just can’t sniff at 500,000 units,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. “They’re doing fine.” Nintendo has sold 22 million Wii units in the United States.

Still, there is little question the current game machines are reaching the end of their life cycle.

“There’s such a thing as market saturation,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group. “One or more of the competitors’ consoles is in 60 percent of Wii households.”

At this stage, Nintendo is concentrating on “adding value for the late adopter,” Mr. Fils-Aime said. He pointed to the eight million units sold in the United States of the Wii Fit gaming exercise board as evidence that the strategy is working. “This has given us the unparalleled ability to bring in new consumers, especially females.”

Mr. Fils-Aime acknowledged that the current console game titles needed freshening, and said this will happen Sunday with the release of a new version of the Mario Brothers franchise, Super Mario Brothers Wii. It will compete for the gamer’s dollar with the just-released Activision sequel, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Available for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PCs, the title sold 4.7 million units on its first day of release in North America and Britain.

The combined sales of Nintendo’s portable game devices, the DS Lite (for dual screen) and DSi, were 457,600 units in October, putting the game platform in second place. Sony’s PlayStationPortable and PSPgo sold 174,600.

While some analysts have expressed doubts that Nintendo can continue to prosper in the hand-held market now that inexpensive games have proved popular for the owners of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, Mr. Fils-Aime expects no impact on the company’s portable business.