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Sony Rejects PS3 Price Cuts
Despite hopeful comments by analysts, Sony has gone on the record (again) saying that it has no plans to cut the PS3's pricetag any time soon. Next Generation reports: "'PS3 prices and shipment plans for the future should be determined by market trends and competition. Sony currently doesn't have any specific plan to cut the PlayStation 3's price.' Analysts believe a price cut is inevitable, as the company struggles to catch Microsoft's early lead with Xbox 360, and the $250 Wii continues to sell as many as can be produced. However, Sony's plan has generally been to hold tight and hope that demand for Blu-ray drives will increase, by the end of this year." Relatedly, the company has outlined releases for the second quarter of this year on the PS2, PS3, and PSP systems.
dig in your heals and hope no one catches on to that fact...
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
cutting the price at this point wouldn't help game sales enough to offset the extra loss they'd be taking on each unit, because the library is still pretty sparse. might as well suck it up and sell whatever units are selling. when the really good games start coming out later this summer and fall, sales will pick up and I wouldn't be surprised to see a november cut of about $100
God Fucking Damnit
Of the 134 words in the summary, 24 were not part of a link. I'd post something constructive, the I could bare to rear more than 10 words of the summary (and we all know the golden rule about reading TFA). Sheesh!
They keep playing the old its my toy and if you don't want to play by my rules you can't play with it... But they don't seem to notice that not many people are willing to play with their toy based on their rules. This includes both game makers as well as customers. Over all I keep hoping that they will see the light and the ps3 will take off with both good games and good price... but untill then I will just keep what I have.
love the taste, hate the texture
Wait for demand for Blu-Ray drives?
Is there any demand, whatsoever?
Hell - demand for HDTVs isn't even all that high.
Regardless, I can watch HD movies via Comcast on demand, download them via XBox 360, or to a PC.
I have no problem at all getting HD content onto my screen.
Why should (most)people care about plastic discs anymore?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't understand why people are confused about the lack of a price cut announcement.
You don't tell the public that a poorly selling, expensive product is going to be $100 cheaper next month unless you want even lower sales for the next month. Lower sales for that month means even lower numbers of customers looking to buy software for the machine.
The announcement of the PS3 price cut will come the same day as the PS3 price cut (see PSP price cut as an example).
Consoles don't usually bring in revenue, no, but the PS3 is estimated to cost $800 per unit to get out the door but it's selling for $600. (The $500 model is discontinued.) Typically, the cost per unit is considered proprietary information so it's only an estimate. This means it's hard to pin down but I do believe this is the highest net loss per unit of any console ever. If they already have to sell a bunch of games and accessories (X) to break even, if they drop the price by another $100 they'll just have to have an average of each user now buy (X * 1.5) games and accessories.
They're bleeding on PS3 right now, so should they bleed more? I guess someone crunched some numbers and came to the same conclusion you did.
Putting on my tinfoil hat, I'd say these rumors of price drops that simply will NOT die are a combination of 1 part wishful thinking, 1 part wanting to make existing owners panic, and 1 part of helping to stifle sales as consumers who are on the fence about pricing would most certainly not want to buy if they anticipate a drop.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Yeah the Wii isn't half a generation ahead of the 360 graphically. But it does have controllers a generation ahead. That's part of the problem launching first. Sony got to see what people thought of the 360, and also hear what Nintendo was doing, and try for the best of both.
The tilt sensors in the PS3 controller are a nice touch and I'd like to see some games make better use of it. Tony Hawks uses the tilt sensors for balancing on grinds / manuals. It feels like a really natural way to do it and for me that was the killer feature vs the PC version I've got. Motorstorm can use them for turning, but that feels like a tacked on extra that doesn't really work.
I don't think Sony has caught up with online stuff yet. The headsets for the 360 also sound like a great piece of kit I'd like to see on the PS3. But that's all software. I think Sony concentrated on getting the hardware in place to do anything the 360 can do, with the idea they can improve software later.
This isn't news. But several other things are also true. Among them:
Sony completely fucking blew the PS3 launch. There are simply not enough games that people actually want, and the price is astronomical so many people decided to wait for more games to be released. But the result of that is that there are less PS3s sold. Developers want to make games for consoles that people actually own, so they will be less inclined to make PS3 games. This won't result in many games being cancelled, but it will result in less games being exclusive to the PS3 - the installed base is less than any other console for which people are still making/selling games, so making a PS3 exclusive is guaranteeing that your profits will be reduced. Since there are less games, and less exclusives (which have traditionally been strong selling points - for example zillions of people bought the PS2 just for Tekken Tag, Gran Turismo, or a Final Fantasy title) this means that less people will want to buy the system.
If you can't sell games, you're not going to make the money.
Also keep in mind that Nintendo makes money when they sell game consoles. They don't lose it. So even if they sold less units they still wouldn't be losing money on consoles. This is why there's room in the industry for first place, second place, and Nintendo. But if Nintendo takes first or second place, I think there's distinctly less room left...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"