Sony's Harrison In No Rush to Lower PS3 Price

njkid1 passed on a link to a GameDaily interview they conducted at DICE with Phil Harrison, SCE WorldWide Studios President. Harrison stays mostly positive throughout the article, pointing out that the availability of consoles is a sign of a healthy supply chain. He denigrates rumble in controllers as a 'last generation' feature, and specifically discusses the company's decision-making process for lowering prices: "The PS3 technology, as with any of our platforms, starts off life at a high price and then we engineer cost out of it. And that process is an investment that you make to combine chips into a single chip or to reduce components or combine components and redesign things, and that investment is part of our planned R&D effort to reduce cost. At the appropriate time and when we can afford to, the business model of the industry is to pass those savings onto the consumer, but we're a long way away from doing that yet."

Comments

Of course

[tbannist]

Really, there's no point in dropping the price right now. Until Sony gets a couple of killer games out, dropping the price isn't going to really excite anyone.

Insulting

[vapspwi]

As a fan of the PS2 who WANTS the PS3 to succeed (I'll buy one when the price comes down...), I find this interview rather insulting. It's just so transparent that EVERYTHING he's saying is just a repeat of the company line, trying to turn negatives into positives.

Lots of PS3s languishing on shelves? "We do a good job managing our supply chain." Target in Newnan, GA, 4 PM on 2/25: 11 PS3s, 0 Wiis. Congrats on your expert supply chain management, Sony, but maybe you'd better focus on SELLING THE PRODUCT.

No rumble in the controllers? "That's a previous-gen feature." Yeah, and why would you carry over a minor feature that most users are neutral or positive about into the next generation...

Motion sensitivity? "Far more opportunity for future innovation..." Ah, so that's why Sony didn't even HAVE motion sensitivity in place until the last minute, then?

Arrgh. Just infuriating.

JRjr

Re:yep

[Cadallin]

Um no, They aren't selling out, and we're not talking a console or two. We're talking even the smallest retailers have a a stack of half a dozen machines, with the big stores having stacks of the things. This isn't just the states either, its the same in Japan. Retailers in Japan have already started to discount the machines just to get rid of them. This isn't bad, its an out and out disaster. And Sony's not helping things either. Telling Europe they're getting crippled systems with impaired backwards compatibility isn't exactly drumming up excitement for the European launch (and its not really pleasing anybody else worldwide either).

If Sony wants to salvage the situation, they need to be doing something right now. Because here's what Sony's got: The worst development tools (vs. Xbox 360, great dev tools, and the Wii, with good tools, and lots of experienced developers in the field), the most expensive platform to develop for (partially due to poor tools, but also due to the use of expensive technologies like blu-ray), the smallest market share, and the slowest growing market share. If I were a developer, I'd be thinking long and hard about my commitment to the PS3 right now. The alternatives are looking very tempting. At this point I wouldn't even count on Final Fantasy remaining Sony exclusive. My guess is that Microsoft is probably flashing crap tons of "partnership" cash in their direction(It's what I would do if I were a Microsoft Gaming Division executive), while Nintendo is content to let their profitability and growth speak for themselves.