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Japanese Stores Lowering PS3 Prices
Kotaku is reporting that the 20GB PS3 is down by 20% the the Akihibara district of Tokyo. Reports from both here and in Japan would seem to indicate that PlayStation 3s are sitting on shelves, as gamers wait for price drops or new games. The Tokyo merchants are anxious, it seems, and ready to get their consoles out the door. From the article: "The 20GB version originally books at 49,980 yen (US $412), but is being offered for 39,980 yen ($329) in a sale ending February. The shop is knocking a flat 10,000 yen ($82) right now. Japanese bulletin board 2chan reports that this at other Don Quijotes as well. It's interesting to check out the PS3 vibe at 2chan; Reasons for not buying go from 'there are no games I want' to 'video stores don't rent Blu-ray movies.' Well, not yet that is."
Bidding on the 20GB on Ebay dropped off first as well - why would buy the 20GB when for $100 more you get a 60GB with the wireless, card readers, and the extra disk space? A lot of the early adopters probably had a PSP as well, which really doesn't talk to the 20GB at all. So all in all, while this is something to note, I doubt you'll see this in the US any time soon.
I think that the price doesn't have quite as much to do with the (lack of) adoption of the PS3 as people seem to think. The biggest problem seems to be that the system doesn't have any friggen games worth a crap.
I have a PS3, and I only have 3 games for it (Resistance: Fall of Man, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and two of them are absolute and utter crap (Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and one of those isn't even an exclusive (Marvel Ultimate Alliance). Compared to the Wii, which has been getting great games at a fairly good clip (Zelda, Elebits, Wario Ware, Metal Slug Anthology, Super Monkey Ball) or the 360, which has had a year to get some good games.(Kameo, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Gears of War- all system sellers)
I would like to see the PS3 do well (after spending that much money on it, I would say I have a vested interest) - but c'mon sony, not many people are going to buy these things just to be able to install Linux on it!
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Well, if Sony is willing to buy back unsold stock (I have never seen this idea in print before, tohugh I have heard it once or twice), they would probably only buy back at the wholesale value, aka the stores still take a hit (Shipping, storage, etc). However if the stores can move it a little bit above wholesale value, then they have a better chance of being in the black.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Yes, check out eBay prices. The 20GB units are now selling below retail.
Remember, price is not what the seller is asking. The price is what a willing buyer will pay a willing seller. When it won't sell, the asking price isn't a real price. eBay makes this so obvious, but it's also true in retail; if there's a huge stack of unsold stuff, the price is going to drop.
Leave it to the Germans to come up with a word for "Pleasure taken in witnessing the deserved suffering of others." Most of us are genetically programmed to find fairness and justice pleasurable. When someone gets away with something unjust or unfair, it hurts us a little. Conversely, when their uppance comes, we get a little thrill of pleasure. This isn't actually a bad thing.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Stores: Hey, will you guys buy back X number of unsold units?
Sony: Pfft! We're SONY. Our systems sell like hotcakes! You won't NEED to sell any back to us!
Stores: Oh ok.
$329 is cheap, that is pretty much the same as what a wii costs here (in the UK a wii is £179), if only I could get one imported here at that price it might be a cheap way of getting a blu-ray player (and of screwing quite a bit of money out of sony in the process) but they don't seem to like the idea of consumers being able to use the free market to their advantage.
As I understand it though Sony must be losing about $100-200 on each one of these... I think that they might have made some mistakes
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
The article references http://2-ch.net/ but calls it http://2chan.net/. 2ch is text only and more popular, 2chan has images. Often people say 2chan when they mean 2ch, but they are two different websites.
I wouldn't be completely surprised if US retailers follow suit in order to get rid of inventory. A relative of mine is an electronics dept Mgr. at a Target. Apparently, they'll often get a shipment of 8-12 PS3's in, and that will satisfy the demand for 2-3 weeks. Also, he's told me that clueless people are STILL coming in, seeing the stock, and buying them to put on e-bay. Of course, that's probably why they get at least one unit returned every week.
Hopefully they drop the price on the PS3 in the U.S. by the time some must-have exclusive titles come out(FFXIII) because im going to go for the cheapest PS3 possible when that happens, but only if they have a decent library. I would sure hate to miss out on the next Shaddow of the Colossus.
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
they had some #$@# games worth playing on the thing. I saw a mountainous stack of PS3s the other day at Best Buy. I thought of the $600 price tag, then I thought of Resistance:Fall of Man and then I couldn't think of anything else but $600. What kinda nut is going to pay that and not have anything to play that is worth a #$%@ If they would have just got half a dozen or so exclusive titles that all were of a calibre equal to Resistance:FOM or better they wouldn't have to drop the price cause the games would move the system. Why they haven't realized this is indicative of just how out of touch they've really become with their market superiority they've enjoyed for nearly a decade. And after recently finishing FFXIII and FFIII - I'm neck deep in Zelda:TP, Okami, Bully, Castlevania:POR, Gears of War, and NWN2 (among others) - I barely have time to get them completed let alone go 'gee, I really need to play Resistance:FOM for $650 - I don't think so...it's just not a good time to get a PS3 and they have no titles.
Gaming for over 25 years
It depends upon the agreement between the manufacturer and retailer. In the 1980's this practice was uncommon in the video game sector, and resulted in the video game crash of '83/'84. When Nintendo introduced the NES, they promised to purchase unsold stock back from the retailers as a method of reassuring them.
So... it sort of depends. I honestly wouldn't be surprised either way. With the Playstation 2 having sold well over 100 million units, I imagine the retailers weren't too concerned. Of course, we're technically talking about the Japanese market were American retail policies don't apply. So most likely, the store is on the hook to get rid of them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
As an ex-retailer, although not part of a big chain, I can tell you that when something you bought for say, 200 dollars is not selling well and there is very little demand for it, you are very tempted to sell it for $150, even if it's retail price is over $200. At some point, you realize profit is not and option, and it becomes a matter of mitigating loss.
The "new sales" video game market is not a good place to retailers, whether people want to admit it or not. Spending $44-46 on a game to sell it at $49.99 is not a happy prospect on most games.. throw in the occasional total bomb, and it becomes a very hard business to succeed in.
Same with stores that exchange defective merchandise, the distributor is the one who deals with sending stuff back to the manufacturer.
I'm sure stores aren't too concerned with the "money sitting on the shelves" with unsold PS3s, the major concern is the shelf space itself as it could have been filled with something that sells instead.
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(This is something Microsoft should do as well.) They can cram as much crap into the "high end package" and charge whatever they want for it. The problem Microsoft and Sony face is that their "Basic Package", which is supposed to be the bargain version, really isn't a bargain at all. Both of these consoles have a "Basic Package" that is too expensive and is reflected in their sluggish sales. Even though Microsoft can claim some sort of victory in shoving 10 million units out the door, neither of these are even close to where the PS2 and XBox where a year later. I see Sony heading down this same sluggish sales path unless the drop the price of their supposedly cheaper unit soon.
This is all a reflection of how horribly expensive console gaming has gotten. We might as well be spending our money on gaming computers instead.
Don Quihote is a discount store here in Japan. Understandably their stores have a windmill theme, but for some reason the Don himself has been turned into a penguin.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
You know those comparison pics we keep seeing, of Wii boxes marked 'totally sold out' and PS3 boxes marked 'Please for the love of God take these things off our hands'? Where are the Xbox 360 boxes?
They're not there. Nobody in Japan wants them at all.
According to this article the PS3 has already sold more units in Japan than has the Xbox 360. Even though it's only been out a month.
The people telling you how the PS3 would surely sell in Japan were telling you that on the assumption that the contest was between Sony and Microsoft - in which case, Sony is a surefire winner. The whole Wii thing was unexpected - although given the enormous craze in Japan for the DS over the summer, perhaps it should not have been such a surprise.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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Oh right, give me a break. If this were happening to the Wii right now it would have been posted on all of the major sites including Kotaku, Joystiq and Slashdot. That news would have been too big of a shock not to be posted on every freaking game site. It's funny how things change. About 3 years ago it was all about making fun of Nintendo and bashing the GameCube by most people and game sites (not so much Slashdot though). Now that the tables are turned the Sony fanboys are hating it! You can make your cake but you can't eat it too?
:P
It's funny that you ignore the fact that most sites DID post about the PS3 winning that award and DO post bad things about other consoles. Did you not notice all of the news about how bad the 360 was selling in Japan? Or all of the wiimote strap breaking issues? or the radio stations Wii contest where the lady died? (not that it's Nintendos fault. Don't blame the name. It could have been a 360 contest where they spin you around until the last one left alive gets a 360 or the Play Station of death contest where you run through a huge obstacle course called the Play Station and try not to be killed by the various deadly traps). The fact is that right now Sony is the one making most of the mistakes and Sony is the one whose console is not selling as well as it should.
And about that IGN award. It did get made fun of a bit by sites like Kotaku but for good reason in my opinion. It's an award for the best new console of 2006 but the reason the PS3 won is because it has the most potential in the future? WTF? It won an award for 2006 based on future on potential alone?! Besides isn't IGN notoriously bias towards Sony? Two can play at that game
In my view, Sony's major mistake was putting marketing in charge of development. Basically, Sony promised the moon and beyond, and delivered something that one would have realistically expected. However, they managed to deliver it in such a way as to alienate many of their customers and suppliers.
Let's list out their recent Mistakes individually:
Delivering a 6 hundred dollar console. Any rudimentary survey of the market would show this is just too damned much. But they wanted to expand the market for blu-ray, and somehow convinced themselves that it wasn't too much for the next generation of gaming. Then realizing the losses, they actually raised the price for launchs in other parts of the world. Again, not engendering affection from their customers.
Really bad statements about the cost of the console... like that people should want to get a second job to buy one. Or that the first 5 million would sell without any games anyway. Or... the list goes on and on. Somebody's PR guy should have been fired a long time ago with the string of "damage control" that only managed to alienate people who had been thinking about the system.
Repeated slippage of launch date. A little slide here and there is understandable, but if you haven't shipped dev systems out, you have no intention at all of hitting that date. This bit of tactical marketing enraged those customers most likely to line up and buy the console on launch day. Nintendo did the same thing with the N64, and paid the price.
Only 1 anticipated good launch title actually made it to launch. Ok, so that's not bad compared to the legions of 360's stuck playing Geometry Wars for a few months after launch, but it's still about 5 system-sellers less than promised.
Last-minute Sixaxis. This doesn't necessarily hurt the system, it's just a somewhat obviously rushed feature that is, currently, too laggy to be useful. Hopefully future games will find ways to use it despite the obvious shortcomings. In the mean time, they should have focused on improving the other parts of the system which could have used the polish time.
Promising a Live-equaling service, then shifting the burden onto developers while delivering a service that pales in comparison. A lot of 360's live stuff is integrated into the shell or on their servers, which takes a tremendous amount of the work off of the shoulders of developers. Sony, on the other hand, is making promises and leaving them up to us to fulfill. This fits EA's server model, but not many other people's.
HDMI waffling. If you're going to require the expensive version of your system and a potential HDTV upgrade to get the selling feature of your new movie format to work, don't waffle back and forth on whether or not it will be required, then pass the buck to movie studios. Either own up to it and require the protection, or don't. Leaving the people unsure if they need the upgrade or not simply makes them put off the decision.
Two words "Rrrrridge Rrrrracer!"*
* horrible presentations leading up to the system launch that basically insulted the intelligence of the audience. The hype machine was in full swing, but the pictures and games simply weren't congruous with what the speakers were saying.
The PSP UMD debacle. Sure, not directly related to the PS3, but taints them nonetheless with the faint wift of late 90's Sega. This was one of Sony's most public claims about the PSP, one which they staked a large portion of their credibility, and they lost an obvious fight.
Suing Lik-Sang out of business for selling imported hardware, while many of their most prominent executives were customers. Quite frankly, I've never worked at a gaming company that didn't purchase random devleopment bits from Lik-Sang at one point or another. Going after them for something as cherished as importing systems was bad PR amongst the development community.
Things weren't all bad for Sony. For one, Blu-Ray does provide a lot more breathing room for content on dis
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