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Sony Denies Holiday PSP Price Drop
1up reports that Sony has no intention of dropping the PSP's price this holiday season. The idea of a price drop, put forth by CNN's Game Over column, has been flatly denied by the company. 1up writer Susan Arendt thinks they may be just a little bit false here: "I'm going to be the 'glass half-full' person and suggest that by saying the company 'currently' has no plans to cut the price 'at this time,' the Sony rep wasn't just being repetitive and redundant, but rather suffering from a Hamlet-esque condition of protesting too much, indicating that Sony does, in fact have a big fat price drop planned, especially considering their history of holiday price cuts."
they have "no intention" of dropping the price this holiday. If they announced that, whatever sales they might have had betweeen now and then would be practically nil as people just waited. This is the same thing Nintendo did with the DS Lite. They claimed over and over the no DS Lite re-design was in the works. Why? To keep sales of the old DS's up, of course.
Why on earth would Sony announce in August that they will be cutting the price of the PSP in 4 months? The sales would tank until the cut, as people would just wait a couple of months to save some money. So of course Sony will deny any future price cuts.
It's obvious why they are going to deny this. If they announce it, that means their already lack-luster PSP sales will go down, since consumers are now aware of the eminent price drop that has been confirmed. They would be insane for announcing a planned price drop that won't occur for months, even if they really are planning it.
:(
Then again, this is Sony we're talking about, so sanity doesn't really play much of a factor in my argument.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
They protest too much? They said 'No' 1 time. That doesn't sound like much to me. Instead it sounds like a wanna-be reporter desperately trying to put spin on lack of news.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
What? You mean you haven't got your presents sorted already?! Theres only 130 shopping days 'til Christmas!
In related news: Sony denies plans to release compelling content for PSP.
A Sony spokesman today denied that Sony was doing anything that would encourage potential customers to purchase its PSP portable gaming system, currently languishing on store shelves everywhere. "Sony really likes what Nintendo has done with the DS. Apple's video iPod is pretty impressive too. We can't do anything to touch that and we think that even trying would just muddy the waters and possibly confuse customers into purchasing our system". To avoid millions of disappointed customers, Sony has developed a three point program:
1. Keep prices uncompetitively high.
2. Avoid revisions with features competitive to the DS.
3. Keep working hard to thwart hackers trying to run homebrew mods: as the only group interested in the PSP, Sony needs to remain vigilant in case this community comes up with the great games that they haven't.
Other related stories: UMD - Today's Betamax or Today's MiniDisc?