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Sony Drops Platinum Title Cost
Eurogamer has the news that Sony has lowered prices on Platinum titles. Selections such as Eye Toy Play 2 and Jak 3 will now retail for about a third less, or roughly $US 34.95. From the article: "The news is set to allow retailers to enjoy a bumper summer at a time when the supply of quality new releases has all but dried up - and consumers will be able to sample a huge range of titles at prices that won't break the bank."
Sony are fighting for their lives. They're already losing to the Nintendo DS on the handheld front with PSP sales in freefall (it's simply too expensive with the economy not in fighting shape). They also just got fined $41 million for tax evasion in Japan - their overseas profits were incorrectly reported.
When the Playstation 2 came out Sony didn't really have to worry about competition. There were Playstation 1 games in development even after the Playstation 2 launched. The Dreamcast had stalled, the Xbox was an unknown quantity and Nintendo was dead in the water.
The Xbox is currently the top dog of the console world - it's now proven to be more capable than the Playstation 2. Gamers that have both platforms are buying Xbox versions of titles (ie: the Grand Theft Auto series) instead of Playstation 2 ones. While the Xbox may not have won on total number of units sold, it has won the mindset of being the more advanced, more desirable gaming machine.
But now we have the Xbox 360, The Destroyer Of Sony's Worlds (due to the number of developers that have defected from Sony's platform) due to launch this year, months before the Playstation 3. Anything that comes out for the Playstation 2 this christmas will be directly compared to games on the significantly superior Xbox 1 - AND the vastly superior 360. They'll be two generations behind. Sony and their developers do not want to compete against that.
So Sony does the only thing that they can do - push all serious games in development to the Playstation 3 and drop the price of their existing games. Although I thought marketing 101 went something like this: When you have to compete on price, you've already lost to your competitors. Serious gamers have already begun to save money for the 360 - and they won't bite.
I predict, with anonymous authority (heh), that the Playstation 2 is dead, and the 360 will be the dominant competitor in the next round of videogame consoles. It'll be interesting to see how much headway the PS3 can make against the 360 - although gamers started distrusting the Sony hype machine when the Playstation 2 completely failed to deliver on Sony's promises (some "emotion engine" that was).