Viewing sales by year according to price alone does not necessarily paint a complete picture. While that data alone indicates that a significant portion of the console's userbase came only after the $200 mark, it ignores other factors which may have been contributed to the sales volume, namely games. With that in mind, using
GameRankings, and the data posted by TheChefO, I've added how many titles in each of those years are rated at 80% or higher (viewed by year of release, avg of "main sites" and with at least 15 reviews).
PS2_________________________XBOX
2000 / 06.40 / $300 / 8 Titles ---
2001 / 18.50 / $300 / 37 Titles --- 2001 / 1.5 / $300 / 14 Titles
2002 / 24.40 / $200 / 55 Titles --- 2002 / 6.5 / $200 / 38 Titles
2003 / 19.87 / $180 / 60 Titles --- 2003 / 5.7 / $180 / 53 Titles
2004 / 11.93 / $150 / 58 Titles --- 2004 / 6.2 / $150 / 49 Titles
2005 / 19.98 / $130 / 45 Titles --- 2005 / 4.1 / $130 / 49 Titles
This data, is of course, far from conclusive, and tries to illustrate quality over quantity. Meaning, just because the game ranked well, doesn't mean it sold well. Conversely, using the top sold games could also be misleading since a hit title coming out when there is a 10 m userbase obviously has the potential to sale more than a hit titled released with a 5 million userbase. Then again, a hit title released earlier also has the potential to sell for a longer period of time. Nonetheless, even with the problems with this data, I think it at least illustrates that a large percentage of the some of the "higher quality" titles come out after the systems hit the $200 price mark.
That said, its rather difficult to draw much in the way of conclusions from, mainly because the $200 mark was reached only 1 - 2 years after launch, and we obivously have a lot more data regarding the years after the $200 price point. Focusing strictly on the 3 year period of pre, during and post $200 (2001, 2002, 2003), there's still a very large descripency between the number of highly regarded titles released, all in favor of coming out during and after the $200 drop. Which further illustrates my point, since I think it would be difficult to say that the price alone contributed to the sale increase, or even that the price was the most significant factor. I would argue that it was definately one of the most significant, but would rank the quality of games available equally as important. I would even go so far as to say that without the quality titles there, after the initial sales spike due to the price drop, sales would have faltered greatly (comparatively speaking). That's just my speculation.
Something that does stand as a strong counter point to my argument, however, is the fact that in 2001, the year prior to price drop, the PS2 saw the release of GTAIII, GT3, and MGS2. I don't think there was another year that 3 titles of that magnitude were released, yet hardware sales were at least 1 million higher than 2001's in every subsequent year except for 2003.
So for the mom or dad who see Halo 3 or GTA4 or whatever game their kids want and just want a cheap present for a birthday or holiday they can get a console with the games they want. It may lack some features, but the point is some consumers will do without extra features--they just want to play games cheaply.
This is, of course, assuming neither one of those titles requires the hard drive, as at least a couple of titles do already, not even a year after launch (Football Manger 2006, FFXI). I can see an argument as to why Halo may or may not require the HDD. It could potentially alienate a % of the market, hurting sales. Conversely, to accommodate non HDD equipped systems, they might have to compromise their vision of the game beyond what is acceptable to them (just speculating). I can see a much stronger case for GTA requiring the HDD since it knows it can enjoy the sales of 2 of 3 target platforms which have HDDs standard (PC and PS3).
