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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."
Why would they start trumpeting a price drop now? When one comes (whenever that may be), there won't be much if any of a warning. Even if they were going to do it next week, they won't tell anyone until it happens. The last thing Sony needs is ill will from the people who were still loyal enough to have already bought a PS3.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
I'm in no hurry to buy one.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
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.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
As a Nintendo shareholder, you have my deepest gratitude.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You mean Sony isn't completely obsessed with the price of their console, like potential customers are? They don't feel bad about the lack of rumble, like the potential customers do? They have their own strategy that doesn't involve pleasing potential customers?
You seem to think that "the press" has it's own agenda here, but in this case they are bringing up legitimate concerns that the public is putting forward and that Sony is ignoring. I won't go as far as saying "self-destructing", but ever since their E3 price announcement they have steadily been eroding the goodwill of gamers and turning off potential customers. Like myself...I was going to buy a PS3 before the sky-high price and lack of exclusives turned me off to it. Their attitude isn't helping me re-evaluate that decision.
Don't bother with the interview, btw. It's nothing more than PR-flak "we can do no wrong" spiel from a clueless non-gamer executive.
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
Except when your competition is selling many more systmes and is 100% sold out all the time. I still can not find a Wii for sale. I have no problem finding PS3s. Then add in that that your competition is making a lot more per system sold than you are and it actually does look pretty ugly.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
Actually, wouldn't the problem be that I can afford to buy $100-200 worth of additional items AND a cheaper system as opposed to a more expensive system with nothing? I remember back in the day saving up my pennies so that I could buy my own SNES. Now, I know this whole "teaching your kid (financial) responsibility" thing is on the way out, but for those few parents encouraging their kids to save up for a smart purchase a $100-200 cut is huge. 1xPS3 @ $499 = 1xWii @ $250 + 5xGames @ $50 ea More potential customers care about price point than those that care about ZOMG GRAPHICS!!!! (especially true when the potential customer's parent is the one that ends up footing the bill)
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
I as talking with a friend online last night and the PS3 came up. It eventually came around to the price and two things came up.
1:$600 in PC upgrades results in an astounding increase in gaming potential for most people. Far more than any PS3. Why should we spend $600 for a box that's merely comparable to the old gaming rig we want to upgrade anyways?
2:If Sony ditched the Blu-Ray player or made it an optiona add-on, the PS3 would barely cost $250, if that. $300 is a hard price-point, like $30,000 is for car buyers. It's hard to justify more than that much for somethng unless there's a real need for it.(let alone $600 or a $60,000 car). The Wii sells well because it's inexpensive and fun. The PS3 is expensive and games are slow to arrive.
3: One more - Me? I bought a PS2 this holliday season for my son. Cheap, effective, and it has Guitar Hero and GT4 and so on. Its a great toy for him and didn't break the bank.
"Until then, you can make no conclusions about how the actual console is selling because retailers won't report this information fast enough!"
Erm, NPD (USA) and Media Create (Japan) keep close track of the sales of all major consoles, and as the PS3 has only been released in those territories, the statistics are comprehensive. Current stats:
November 2006:
Xbox 360 -- 511K
Wii -- 476K
PS3 -- 197K
December 2006:
Xbox 360 1.1 mm
Wii 604.2 K
PS3 490.7 K
January 2007:
Xbox 360 294k
Playstation 3 244k
Wii 436k
NPD also does Canada stats, but the PS3 has been the slowest selling console there as well (by far).
In short, I do believe there is reason for Sony to worry, but not to panic. Yet. This is a marathon, not a sprint, after all...
The problem is that, certainly from the point of view of the consumer, PS3 isn't anything new. It's a PS2 with a few generations of silicon advancements incorporated, just like the Xbox 360 is an Xbox with newer silicon. Oh, and better online support and other minor tech, but it's still fundamentally more of the same.
Cell doesn't bring anything to the table but the possibility of more MIPS. As a computer architect, more MIPS is of course interesting to me, and the particulars of how the Cell works are fascinating. As a gamer, it's just more MIPS. Just like the Xbox 360 is more MIPS. That's no more a "new direction" than the PS2 was when it was released. It's the same direction, just trudging along Moore's Law silicon improvements and little else changes. The only difference is that Sony jumped out further ahead on the technology curve this time, getting something new and paying a price premium for it. Riding the bleeding edge is great if you are a hardcore gamer who buys Alienware boxes, but it is a terrible place to be for what is supposedly a mass-market consumer electronic device.
BluRay is the same deal -- all it really does is offer more storage. New direction? PS1 was CD, PS2 was DVD, PS3 is bigger DVD. Sounds like more of the same to me. Yet unlike CD with PS1 or DVD with PS2, BluRay is brand-new technology and thus much more expensive than a more established technology would be, and this is a premium the consumer is paying for.
The fact is that both Microsoft and Sony are greedy, and neither is trying anything new. Both are operating under the "same as before * Moore's Law improvement ratio" scheme of simply pursuing more performance. Sony thought they could beat MS by jumping out ahead on the curve, hoping consumers would be willing to pay the price premium for that decision. They also thought they could leverage the PS3 into victory for BluRay over HD-DVD, again charging consumers for that decision. Going faster down the same path is not the same as a change of direction. The only difference between MS and Sony this generation is that Microsoft executed on the bog-standard console game plan more intelligently than Sony did.
The only one actually trying anything different this generation is Nintendo. Which I'm grateful for, because the Gamecube was essentially the same as the PS2 and Xbox, a "me too" bog-standard console upgrade if ever there was one. It was N's worst console. Now they're back where they were from the NES to N64 days, as leaders and definers of industry standards. Whether it works for them or not, if you really want to give credit to those trying a new path, there is nobody to pick but Nintendo.
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