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$499 PlayStation 3 Confirmed
Gamespot is reporting that the rumoured price drop from earlier this week is a reality. Starting on July 10th, the current 60GB model will sell for $499. Coming to US shores in August is the 80GB version only available in South Korea at the moment, which will retail for $599. They're bundling that unit with Motorstorm, so it's not just another 20 gigs for $100. "The price drop further indicates that, after a slow start, Sony is now aggressively trying to expand its customer base in the US. The move comes none too soon. According to the latest figures from industry-research firm the NPD Group, the PS3 only sold 82,000 units in the US in May, compared to the Xbox 360's 155,000 units and the Wii's 338,000 units." So, is this it? Will this price drop make you buy a PS3, or are you still holding off for the big games this fall?
I want one for the Blu-Ray player. I have a 61" DLP set that is just screaming for Blu-Ray or HD DVD, Personally I like Blu-Ray. Currently stand alone Blu-Ray players are $650+ (from a quick Google search). From the reviews I have read it holds up fairly well against them. Plus an awesome gaming machine.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
It's the only game I need that's only for PS3. I might even wait until they port it though. $500 for one game is too expensive.
Also going to wait to see what Wii games are out this Christmas. With the immense popularity, I expect Wii will get a surge of games - but knowing that games take time to make, I wonder when it will happen. Perhaps Fall of '08.
And honestly looking at FFXIII despite being a huge FF fanboy doesnt make me bite at all, not for 500 dollars. As for the other PS3 killer apps right now, more than a few are actually out or coming out on the 360, which I already own.
Im sure a bunch of people are going to jump on me with bluray this, and HDMI that, but quite frankly Sony really think about what made their PS2 a huge seller. They though it was the diehards, and built a system perfect for them. What they forgot was the casuals, of which the 100 dollar PS2 became a big seller not the 300 dollar original pricetag version.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
the ps3 has been "worth it" to any videophile since its release simply because of its bluray capability. It now has DVD upscaling.
for the more pure gamers out there - the ps online system isn't bad - the downloadable content can be quite good
My opinion isn't indicative of your average gamer. I bought an Xbox just to see the Halo 2 phenomena. I learned that voice chat lets you know you're playing with 12 year olds who get mad whether they win or lose. I learned that Halo 2 had no depth besides a couple insta-kill moves. I had my fun with it though. I won't buy a next gen system until I find a game that breaks ground with online play because that's all I like.
God spoke to me.
Hmmm. Let's see. He said "basic XBox 360". You quoted the price for the top of the line 360 with the most expensive add-on available. But you're clearly just trolling. You know that $499 less $200 is $299. And you know that $299 is the price of the 360 core. But you wandered off like PS3 fanboys always do. What you (and Sony) forget is that some people buy a game console just to play games. And if you just play games the PS3 is horribly overpriced. Even at $499, it will still be way more expensive than the competition (by 66% to 100%).
And you know that $299 is the price of the 360 core. But you wandered off like PS3 fanboys always do. What you (and Sony) forget is that some people buy a game console just to play games.
And you did what MS fanboys always do. You assumed someone can play games on the $299 Core. The Core system doesn't have a hard drive or memory card, which is necessary for online play or to play original Xbox games. So you have to pay extra for either of these if you want to play online games. A hard drive is required to play Xbox games.
So yes, you can play games on the Xbox 360 Core system for $299, assuming you don't want to play online and don't want to play original Xbox games.
"So, is this it? Will this price drop make you buy a PS3, or are you still holding off for the big games this fall?"
That's it? Where's the third option, "neither of the above". I want my third option, god damn it!!
Let's see, what does $499 PS3 change. XBOX360 is $399, Wii is $250.
For your extra money, you get poor list of games, $65 a pop, and Blu-Pending-Disaster support, at around $45 a pop.
I'm about as excited about all of this, as I would be if Epson released $50 cheaper printers. It's about the ink, people!
I wondered about that. "announcing" a price-drop tend to make no sense whatsoever. It'll only ensure that sales (at current price) drop to near-zero since everyone who wants one, but are *not* desperate for one (if they where desperate for one, they'd have it already) will hold off buying atleast until the price actually does drop. I guess when the price-drop is only a short time off this effect doesn't much matter.
You're about their least-favourite kind of customer - you like their heavily-subsidised hardware, but for running Linux on, not for the games. You'll cost them $200-300 with no hope of making back even close to that on game licence fees.
leatI never really understood why Sony went to the trouble of making Linux available for the PS3 (at least, not why they did it for free). I can only think it was Krazy Ken's engineer training overriding his good sense. Yes, they got some good PR from it, but only in a small segment of the market, and that segment almost by definition isn't interested in buying games for their new toy.
They also ran the very real risk of universities etc buying up thousands of PS3s to build cheap HPC clusters, which would have been a financial disaster far outweighing any kudos they gained.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Hmmm. Let's see. He said "basic XBox 360". You quoted the price for the top of the line 360 with the most expensive add-on available. But you're clearly just trolling.
The guy you're calling a troll made a point of referencing HDMI versions.
That was always the main sticking point on the $100 price difference between the two skus of the PS3. Wireless this and that, a bigger harddrive, these were all things you could upgrade if you wanted to. The one thing you couldn't upgrade was HDMI which, even now, no one knows how big an issue HDCP is going to turn in to in three or four years.
In short, if HDMI wasn't an issue, the $599 PS3 pricepoint would never have been an issue and the PS3 should always have been having its $100 cheaper version compared against Microsoft's cheaper versions (plus the cost of a memory card to unlock the functionality). That HDMI was considered such a critical factor, with many refusing to buy the cheaper option, makes considering HDMI variant of the X360 absolutely valid.
What you (and Sony) forget is that some people buy a game console just to play games. And if you just play games the PS3 is horribly overpriced. Even at $499, it will still be way more expensive than the competition (by 66% to 100%).
That argument can be taken as far and ridiculously as you want:
Were I to be facetious, the $299 X360 is still way more expensive (more than double the cost) of the PS2 which has a far better library of games. The counter argument there is to list the improved gaming features, higher resolution, etc. of the 360 over the PS2 - but then that same argument also holds that if better quality graphics are your criteria for games, the XBox 360 can't match the PS3's slightly higher end hardware and sure as hell can't match a PC with four 8800 chips, a gig of ram on each of the two cards, on a quad core processor.
In other words, purely looking at gaming...
It's a continuum. Everyone picks the right price point for them (except for fanboys who declare the price point of their favored unit to be the only valid one, dismissing cheaper options as poorer quality while ignoring the cost savings and dismissing the more expensive options as overpriced while dismissing the quality improvements as trivial).
The PS3 is more expensive than an X360. Compare the minimum usable X360 (with 20GB hdd) against the PS3 and the small increase in gaming improvements doesn't justify the price increase if that's your sole criteria.
Then again, for many people, the more than double price increase from PS2 to X360 isn't justified either.
For other people, spending over $200 on a console, they damn well expect next gen DVD playback and a $200 add on player for the X360 that already doesn't work with every HD-DVD out there and doesn't have HDMI which may turn out to be critical down the line and for them the criteria isn't matched.
That's the fun thing about a diverse market, everyone gets to pick their own criteria and then find what fits that criteria the best.
Before I'm accused of being a Sony fan
In other words expect a full video / music download service and possibly IPTV to be announced at E3. It's been a long time coming seeing as it was such an obvious and natural feature for the PS3 to have.
"Stuff is worth what people will pay for it."
Clearly, the PS3 isn't worth $600 to very many people. I'll be surprised if it's worth $500 either. Despite all the technology they've crammed in there, the games library has almost zero appeal. Boring, joyless games plus Blu-Ray does not equal $500.
With the Wii outselling PS3 6-to-1 in Japan, there's little reason to think third-party software makers will turn this around.
I remember that the console was created to sell to hotels and not individual consumers, and that it was released to the consumer market purely out of demand.
I remember that the console's arcade symbiosis made it impossible to compare to standalone consoles.
I remember that the console thrived for over 15 years.
Yet, everyone who as a kid couldn't afford one likes to characterize it as a failure.
Neo*Geo was successful. Neo*Geo CD was a small success. The Neo*Geo portable certainly was a failure. The original console was not. SNK didn't lose money on that.
Please stop perpetuating what has become an urban myth. If you want to bash an expensive console for failing, have your way with 3DO and Jaguar. Neo*Geo is not a good comparison in any way to PS3.
I'm not waiting for a specific price point, I'm just not enamoured with the product. They have generated no "need to own that" within me for it. And therein lies the failure.
If there was just one really revolutionary , fun game for it then I might be swayed. The problem is for me to believe that I would want to play said game somewhere, maybe at a friends house, in order to seal the deal and get me to buy one. And to this point besides one gadget and gaming accumulator where I work I don't know a single person I socialize with who owns one of these things.
Where is this generations Katamari?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I've had a 60GB PS3 since March and it hasn't done anything stupid yet. The fan speeds up sometimes, slows down others, but is otherwise rock-solid. I did manage to have it get upset with me during a Blu-Ray movie I rented from Blockbuster but then kicked myself after ejecting the disc and realizing it was covered in smudges I should have cleaned off in the first place.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)