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Sony Looks to 'Refine' PS3 Price

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-corpspeak-for-price-cut dept.

Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."

38 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. It Needs "Refined"... by morari · · Score: 5, Funny

    By about $350...

    --
    "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
    1. Re:It Needs "Refined"... by MS-06FZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's funny, but just stupid. The PS3 is and always has been worth well more than its price in the store for a lot of reasons that nobody should have to justify anymore. That's ridiculous. Value is subjective. Sure, the PS3 is a fine machine, but to say that it's worth the price - that's something people have to decide for themselves. You could put $3000 worth of computer hardware into a little black box that does nothing but play MP3s - it doesn't matter that it cost you $3000 in hardware, though, because the thing is still worth no more to me than what an iPod costs.

      If Sony's doing well at selling the PS3 at its current price point - then fine, good for them. For me, it's too damn expensive. There are much better ways I could spend $600, you know?
      --
      ---GEC
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    2. Re:It Needs "Refined"... by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That said, people aren't always willing to pay what something is worth

      On the contrary, which people are willing to pay for something is the DEFINITION of its worth.

    3. Re:It Needs "Refined"... by twistedsymphony · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the point is most of the things that the PS3 can do don't appeal to the people who consider it to be over priced...

      Maybe that $3000 MP3 player also plays games and Blu-Rays discs... but it's still just an MP3 player to those consumers who don't want to play games or Blu-Ray. To use another analogy if you were looking at two houses that were equal in all aspects except one had an extra 5 car garage and cost twice as much... if you have no cars, it doesn't matter if those 5 bays are "worth" the extra cost because you have no intention of ever using them, it's just a useless extremity that needlessly drives up the price.

      The problem with adding features that drive up the price of your console is that every feature you add shrinks the potential market of people who will find 100% of your features useful and valuable.

      Would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in Blu-Ray see the blu-Ray features valued at $0... would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in WiFi see the WiFi features valued at $0 etc... Eventually you have a machine that "just plays games" because a large group of gamers don't care about the noise and your console suddenly isn't valued at what you thought it was in the eyes of the consumer.

      --
      Collector's Edition
  2. oh oh by Gorkamecha · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When ever a company adds "refined" to a product it tends to get more expensive not less.... Playstation 3, it's for more refined tastes...not like some cheap Wii. Hey this sort of thing works for bottled water companies! What could possibly go wrong?

    1. Re:oh oh by sqldr · · Score: 2, Funny

      1) cheap Wii....
      2) Hey this sort of thing works for bottled water companies...

      I sincerely hope that wasn't deliberate..

      --
      I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  3. What was their first hint? by realinvalidname · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe the fact that a PS3 with one game costs as much as a 360 and a Wii combined?

  4. So... by brkello · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is about every 2 days when we get someone from Sony talking about price cuts then someone else at Sony saying that there won't be price cuts. Now come all the posts on how it is stupid for a company to announce a price drop until they are ready to actually drop the price. blah blah blah...news worthy? blah blah blah. It's Friday morning...I need something better than this to get me through the rest of the day.

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    1. Re:So... by EggyToast · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well the caveat that they shouldn't announce until they're ready to drop the prices implies that people would actually buy the console at the current price :)

  5. Captain' Obvious by alph0ns3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper'

    Wow, this guy needs to win the "Captain Obvious" award of the year!

    1. Re:Captain' Obvious by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, it's not obvious. The XBox 360 for instance is also cheaper, and not getting as much buzz at the moment. (Perhaps just because it isn't 'new' at the moment, but also because it isn't as 'different' as the Wii is.)

      Yes, the Wii is cheaper, and yes it is sucessful, but is it sucessful just because it is cheaper? I sincerly doubt it. I think Sony and Nintendo intentionally aimed for different target audiences, and Sony found out that the audience they targeted at didn't exist in the numbers they thought existed. Now they will have to scramble to market a product to an audience it is not designed for. Meanwhile, Nintendo judged their market quite well.

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    2. Re:Captain' Obvious by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While the target audiences are different, the target audiences overlapped. Nintendo chose to build a console that almost everyone would like in some way. Sony chose to build a console that only a small portion of people would like. Sony limited their market by making it cost so much, that even a lot of people who would probably want one, aren't buying one. Same thing happened to NeoGeo. Everybody that I knew who saw the thing said they wanted one, but I don't know anybody who actually bought one. I would like to own a PS3, but it is way out of my price range. So by having a smaller number of people who actually want the product, and by making it really expensive, they have really cut down on sales. Decreasing the price will bring up sales, but it won't capture as many sales as the Wii, because their target market is "everybody".

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Captain' Obvious by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      AH NEO GEO now you're talking.

      Actually, Neo Geo was originally designed as a rental machine, the idea was you'd go to EB and rent one for your birthday party, so you could play real arcade games at home. Hence, the high prices. They put the cartridges on a different physical format so arcade operators couldnt use them, otherwise the hardware and games are identical.

      Anyways, once they started showing up, people wanted to buy them - so EB started selling them. The prices never dropped, once again, they were being sold to EB for the purposes of rental. Eventually SNK realized what was going on, and tried to market to the rest of the home crowd with the Neo Geo CD. The load times killed the "true arcade" feel, and the appeal really was to arcade gamers, since there were only weak attempts at making home console titles for it.

      So, you can't compare PS3 - if you look at it in perspective, the Neo Geo AES was a completely unexpected success.

      The story of SNKs decline and demise is long and sordid, but sadly had little to do with tech or their products. You can read about the Barones on the googleweb.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    4. Re:Captain' Obvious by Khisanth+Magus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The only thing that leads me to believe nintendo may of misjudged their market is that they were completely unprepared for the demand and simply didn't have the production capabilities to keep up with it.

    5. Re:Captain' Obvious by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Interesting

      EA is actually trying new gameplay ideas, as unbelievable as it sounds. From what I heard the port of the Godfather game to the Wii made good use of the Wiimote, same for Madden Wii. I know many regular and hardcore gamers ignore EA because of the large number of rehashes but strangely EA seems to have adapted seamlessly to the different requirements of the Wii platform. I guess they can innovate if they want, they just didn't want to until now.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  6. Games by strider2k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't really care about the price. I'd be glad to pay the $600 US dollars for the premium. The sad part is, what games will I get? The answer is none. I don't have a big HD tv. So unless they release at least 1 big gun soon (MGS4 or FF13) then there's no incentive for me to buy. I guess I'll play my ds/gba (lots of good games) or board games (Settlers or Puerto Rico)!!!

    When they do bring the AAA top tier games, then it'll be World War III in console terms.

    --
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    1. Re:Games by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So unless they release at least 1 big gun soon (MGS4 or FF13) then there's no incentive for me to buy. I think the major point is that they need to release AAA exclusives. If they lose exclusivity on either (or both) MGS/FF, then there is little reason, if any, for people to buy a PS3 over a 360. Given Sony's woes as of late, how long will the company allow their playstation division to hemorrhage money? It's not like they've got a blank check like the MS gaming division.
    2. Re:Games by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So unless they release at least 1 big gun soon (MGS4 or FF13) then there's no incentive for me to buy.

      the sad thing is that they said that the console would heat up for christmas, but the great games wouldn't come out until after that. So Sony has what, one maybe two A-list titles until after christmas?

      That's a long time.

      When they do bring the AAA top tier games, then it'll be World War III in console terms.

      I don't know, will it be? Will they still be in the running by then? I'm kind of thinking that there's some good games on the Xbox 360 right now, that pretty much everyone in the market has a PS2 so back-compatibility is a total non-issue, and that people will be buying Wiis (they are becoming more available even now) and Xbox 360s while they're waiting for Sony to get their shit together and get out some games.

      But, maybe that's just wishful thinking.

      --
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    3. Re:Games by Lightwarrior · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's worse than the PS3 needing just AAA exclusives - there's a general dearth of quality games available. Check out Game Rankings / Metacritic / GameStats / the rating grouper of your choice; the only game above 90% is Oblivion. There are four exclusives in the Top 20: Resistance, Motorstorm, Virtual Fighter 5, and flOw.

      And once you get out of the Top 20, the ratings has already dropped below 80%. That's a serious, serious issue.

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    4. Re:Games by amuro98 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The PS3 needs exclusive games that are "good" or better. Darkness isn't exclusive, nor is Assassins Creed.

      I don't know why people keep mentioning Singstar. Do you honestly think a karaoke/DDR game is going to convince anyone to buy a PS3? Even fans of those games aren't going to spend $600 (or even $500) just to get a single game.

      Warhawk is very confusing, as it was first a Blu-ray game, then was a online only deathmatch type game that you would download, for free even. Now it's supposedly both a BR AND download game?

      Furthermore, even if Sony did manage to lower the price this year (unlikely) and quadruple its sales, according to the latest data, that would put the PS3's sales at about 350k in the US. This is lot better, and may even beat monthly 360 sales for once. Unfortunately, the 360 still has its 12 months head start, plus months of outselling the PS3. Also, any move that Sony makes will simply be matched by Microsoft who unlike Sony, is actually making a small profit off their hardware at the current time. On top of all this, the Wii is expected to continue its strong sales into 2008, meaning it will still be ahead of the PS3, and ever gaining on the 360.

      Finally, consider this, the 360 has Halo3 coming this fall, and that alone is expected to be a major incentive to buyers. The PS3 has nothing nearly as compelling on its schedule at this time. Yes, I know Lair! Heavenly Sword! But remember - those games aren't out yet. Many folks feel they got burned by the PS3's launch lineup which only managed to turn out 1 OK/good exclusive game. Even Genji, which was expected to be a major inticement for gamers, turned out to be fairly mediocre and worse still, buggy. I sincerely hope that Lair, Heavenly Sword and others live up to their hype, but past experience tells me that this is rarely the case. I'm sure they'll be good games, but not the WOW-GREAT! titles that the PS3 needs right now.

    5. Re:Games by DrEldarion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Man, if you think that's bad, look at the Wii's rankings on GameRankings.

  7. This just in... by pragma_x · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ""'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' "

    In a recent shake-up within the Japan-based electronics juggernaut Sony, Captain Obvious was promoted to the position of CEO.

  8. "..and then you will begin to see break-out games" by tonywestonuk · · Score: 3, Funny

    erm, I could buy a C64 from ebay, and play "break-out" games...

  9. Re:In other news, PS3 to lose more money than befo by tb()ne · · Score: 2, Informative

    So they're going to sell it at more of a loss than originally? Especially with games for the thing being expensive to make?

    Not necessarily. Production costs are apparently coming down so they will only take more of a loss if the price cut is greater than the reduction in production costs.

  10. Very good business model.... by MrAngryForNoReason · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours...

    Oh yes the revolutionary business model of selling a product for a reasonable price while still making a profit. Opposed to Sony's excellent method of selling at a staggeringly high price and *still* making a loss on each unit sold. Genius.

    1. Re:Very good business model.... by RamblinLonghorn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Well, it isn't difficult to sell an old useless console with profit, because that's what the wii is, old technology, the control is not even that great or special, for god sake, you can't even play a dvd on the bugger even though it has a dvdplayer inside..."

      It's the same reason a Honda Accord outsells a Porsche 911. It's good, proven technology, that, while not the most powerful or cutting edge, fits the budget of the largest segment of the car buying populace. The PS3 is awesome technology, I think very few people will argue that point. The Wii is using older technologies in new ways, and it's got alot of people intrigued. And as far as a DVD goes, it will more than likely be added in a future software update, and who doesn't have 2 or 3 different ways to play a DVD.

  11. Blu-ray is the problem. by Fross · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A common argument for the high price of the PS3 is that "hey, it includes a blu-ray player!" Which is true, and changes something.

    The PS3 isn't the most expensive console, rather, it is the cheapest available Blu-ray player.

    So not only does Sony have part of the market for the next-gen console market with the PS3, but it also has the vast majority of the HD-video market as well.

    The sales figures are testament more to the fact that nobody wants HD video at the moment, and forcing people to take it in a bundle is crucifying them. The PS3 may be better than the 360 (the games look about the same to me), but it costs $300 more (at least here in the UK) - that's a lot to a gamer. You can make a car with a gold steering wheel for an extra $50,000, but if nobody *wants* a gold steering wheel, then your car isn't going to sell at all, as good as it is, unless you can sell if without the steering wheel.

    1. Re:Blu-ray is the problem. by SparkyFlooner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have the 360 add-on HD-DVD player, and I find myself ignoring HD-DVD titles and just renting regular DVDs. (and yes, I have an hdtv) Regular DVDs still look good, you know? Even 200 bucks on an HD player seems like too much for what you get. I would've been content watching regular DVDs until the price of an HD player came down to 100 or less.

    2. Re:Blu-ray is the problem. by DarkJC · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're applying American prices to UK prices.

      In the UK, it costs £381.96 on Amazon for a 360 Premium + HD-DVD player...381.96 GBP = 755.107 USD
      It costs £399.99 for a PS3...399.99 GBP = 790.754 USD

      Hardly $100. The 360 is slightly discounted on Amazon at the moment as well, otherwise they'd turn out to be the same. And that's with a 360 that lacks an HDMI port..if you wanted one it'd end up costing you more than the PS3.

    3. Re:Blu-ray is the problem. by DrEldarion · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a lot more to using blu-ray than just promoting a new format (though I'm sure that's part of it). With gaming this gen, games are going to be LARGE. We already saw PS2 games spanning multiple DVDs, so it makes sense to move to a bigger storage medium as standard. It's already been stated that Resistance would have had to be on two dual-layer DVDs, and Rockstar said they're having issues with storage space on the 360 version. Not including a better drive in the 360, to me, shows a pretty big lack of foresight (the Wii is different since it's standard-def).

      Sony wants the PS3 to be something amazing - the total experience. It definitely has the potential to be that, whereas the Wii (especially) and the 360 are likely to show growing pains over the next couple years.

      Now we just need the games... :/

    4. Re:Blu-ray is the problem. by SparkyFlooner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Agreed. More space can only be a good thing. The problem is if PS3 doesn't really land many exclusives, all the 'cool' games will be designed for multiple consoles using the least common denominator, which is DVD. So sure there's more space on a Blu Ray disk, and the games could look and sound better on a PS3, but the space wouldn't really be used for gameplay.

  12. Re:When will they learn... by Floritard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll tell you right now, the price is stopping me. And that is all that is stopping me. I had a Wii for a few months. I bought it on an impulse (right place right time), partly because I was intrigued by the new control scheme, but mostly because it's waaay cheaper than the other "next-gen" systems. I have since given it away to a friend of mine because I promised to buy her one at some point, but also because there are no games out for it that I really want (yet). While I did get bored of it already, the lack of games wasn't something that stopped me from buying it in the first place. And the Wii is so cheap that I'll easily pick one up again when they become more available. Not so with that wallet monster PS3. I can build most of a new PC off newegg for the price of that little bastard. Games or no games, it gives me pause dropping $600+ on a fucking console, they're supposed to be the cheap alternative to PC gaming. As it stands now I really don't know what to do, there are games coming out that I am looking forward to but luckily they aren't here yet. I'm on the fence here, I'll definitely get another Wii, but I will also want either a 360 or a PS3 for those truly next-gen games. Despite Sony's incompetance of late, I really dislike Microsoft's history of foul play and would prefer to stop buying into their products, especially after this power-grab Vista/DX10 business. I'm not especially excited about giving Microsoft so much control over the gaming world. But that PS3 is so damn expensive that I'm worried if I buy it I'll be stuck with a failed system. An expensive failed system. This whole gen is off to a bad start if you ask me. Too much risk. I'm waiting, and the industry isn't getting my gaming dollar.

  13. Re:It's still a good buy as just a blue ray player by seebs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're sort of begging the question, there. You're assuming that a blu-ray player is worth buying at "full price", and looking at this as a discount.

    If I open a store called "McDucks" that sells bad hamburgers for $500, and then McDonalds starts selling them for $90, does the fact that they're more than 80% cheaper make them a good deal? No.

    Blu-ray isn't worth the money, so getting it for only way too much instead of WTF are you thinking too much is not a big deal.

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  14. Re:"..and then you will begin to see break-out gam by goodenoughnickname · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, but sliding the SIXAXIS back and forth is going to make the PS3 version kick ass.

  15. You learn something new every day by Chelloveck · · Score: 2, Funny

    'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,'

    And here I thought the reason for the Wii's success relative to the PS3 is because the Wii has games that don't suck. What a fool I was.

    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
  16. Re:When will they learn... by xero314 · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's why my wife and kids play the Wii and I log about 20-30 hours per week on my 360. Sorry I just thought that needed Highlighting. Ever think your wife and kids play the Wii because you log 20-30 hours per week on your 360? It's either that or you really need to get a job.
  17. Re:sigh... by Ant+P. · · Score: 2

    Ok, Sony - the PS3 is a milestone - sure to go down in history. Nothing can compare.

    Saturn? Dreamcast? Neo-Geo?
  18. Re:Hope... by Pluvius · · Score: 3, Informative

    Certainly Sony knows that the Wii is currently selling because of a combination of price and hype. Hype wasn't mentioned because the question Stringer was asked was about the PS3's price. You'll notice that Sony is trying to combat the hype problem elsewhere, like in their new blog.

    BTW, here is a transcript of the interview in question. You'll also notice that Stringer did counterargue the idea that the Wii is selling better because it's more fun.

    Rob