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60GB PS3 Price Cut Not Just a 'Fire Sale'
Heffenfeffer writes "Those excited about the $100 price cut that the 60 GB PS3 recently received should act quickly — according to an interview from SCEE president David Reeves: 'All they're doing is taking their stock in trade that they've got at the moment of the 60GB model, marking the price down and it will all be gone by the end of July.' When asked if the 60GB PS3 would be no more after the fire sale, he confirmed, 'In America, yes ... what the US are offering from the 1st of August is a USD $599 version with one game.'" Meanwhile, the EU won't be getting the 80GB system at all. Instead, they'll be getting a new starter pack bundle pack with two games and an extra controller for the same cost as the current system on its own (£425, or $862). Update: 07/13 17:17 GMT by Z : Okay ... it's really challenging to understand what's going on when Sony as an entity is saying two different things. Despite the above coming from a Sony executive, it looks like this is completely untrue. Says a Sony of America spokesperson: "SCEA has reacted with puzzlement to the European perspective, suggesting that there may have been an incorrect interpretation. The spokesperson said, 'Those quotes from David Reeves are not accurate.'"
OK, i am usually one of the first ones to defend sony, and how much i love my PS3(which i do). But this is just too much. How can sony honestly be that stupid. Unless we are missing something and they are going to drop the 80gb model down to 499 after the 60gb is phased out this makes no sense at all. Why announce this after you have an amazing showing at E3 and then screw it all up with bad PR like this. Really ridiculous.
I wonder if their plan included possibly forcing Microsoft to cut the price on the 360 (and announce that at e3) and rubbing salt in that wound since Microsoft's game division lost money and with that $1 billion warranty extention deal.
Didn't go that way, obviously, so, maybe my imagination for dark smoke filled conference rooms at Sony is running wild again.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I would cut the xbox 360 (all versions) by $50 and say this is a permanent move. Would put sony on the defensive.
Oh god, we all should have expected this from Zonk by now...
The current 60 gig PS3 is now out of production and is now $499 as anyone can see here on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/
There will be a 80 gig model that is introduced next month that will have partial software emulation - right now European PS3s with EE emulation are at ~90 percent PS2 compatibility. As the remaining stock of 60 gigs get sold the 80 gig will come down to the same price as the current 60 gig model.
As most people know, harddrives don't really drop in price they just get larger capacity for the same price and eventually the low end drives start to become more expensive. That is happening with the 60 gig laptop drives and Sony is moving on to the cheaper in bulk 80 gig drives. So costs will be about the same for the larger harddrive. The removal of the EE hardware and the usual manufacturing cost cutting, including 65nm later this year, will mean the 80 gig PS3 model will be actually cheaper to manufacture than the current 60 gig models.
So by the time you can't get a 60 gig anymore 80 gigs will have moved down in price to $499.
And apparently, the 80GB PS3 removes the Emotion Engine (PS2) hardware and replaces it with software emulation. So not only are they not dropping the price, their making it less backwards compatible as well but hey, here's an extra 20GB and the only game worth playing on the PS3 to make up for it...
It wasn't even a price cut to begin with. at most, it was a SKU shift. it would be the same thing if MS ditched the core system, dropped the premium to core prices, and priced the Elite and the original's premium price.
I'm so glad I bought a Wii. No Backwards compatibility problems, no Blinking Red Rings of Death, and more Ben Franklins in my wallet.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Agreed! Sony obviously did the right move with the $100 price cut-- The PS3 has led the Amazon "videogames" best-sellers list (with the Blu-Ray remote #2 and extra controller #3) ever since the announcement. They're not going to undo that.
On Amazon, the PS3 has been outselling the Wii since the price cut, and the XBox 360 is all the way down at #20. (Even the PS2 is outselling the XBox 360 on Amazon.)
Before people go nuts about never buying anything PS3/Sony/blah blah blah again, why don't you wait to see what ACTUALLY happens?
(It's also interesting that Blu-Ray remotes for PS3 appear to be selling more units than all the HD DVD players combined... another thing that Sony is not going to endanger with a boneheaded move...)
E pluribus unum
Why is it that every time you almost convince me to buy a PS3 do you have to do something like this? Well, I suppose thanks are in order, since even a $500 upfront cost is still kinda steep and I didn't quite have the disposable income to blow on that just yet.
All that said, I *will* likely buy a PS3... but not a nanosecond before there is a compelling game for it that will not be out for the Xbox 360. ( Yes, I'm looking at you, Square-Enix.) Hopefully, by then, the freakin thing will be at the $399 price point that I wanted in the first place.
Sony is phasing out the 100% backwards compatible model, replacing it with a model which STILL costs way too much at the original price, only gains a "who cares" game and 20 GB of hard drives space...
While at the same time, replaces the quality backwards compatibility with a incomplete software layer...
Now tell me why I shouldn't just get an XBox instead. The hardware may be unreliable, but Microsoft will at least fix it when it breaks.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The consumers don't seem to view this price cut as a farce. PS3 is the NUMBER ONE seller on Amazon right now:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/
How about Xbox 360? It's #20, behind such consoles as PS3, Wii, DS Black, PS2 Black and PS2 Silver.
BTW the article summary is 100% FUD. If it were written by paid Microsoft shills I don't see how it would change from its current state.
The point I was *trying* to make was that there are plenty of options coming down the pipe for the rest of this year. While the price cut alone might not have influenced me into buying an PS3, their library is getting interesting enough that it might have pushed me (and many other consumers) over the edge.
Gamers have a lot to be happy about this year -- an over-abundance of choice is not a bad problem to have. It's really only bad for Sony, trying to woo gamers who have already invested in a console or two into getting one more. Their Blu-ray format might be outselling HD-DVD 2:1, but they're still orders of magnitude lower than the numbers in DVD. As downloadable content becomes more prevalent (see also: MS's deal with Disney) they need to refocus on gamers, and I think Nintendo has shown the grossly underestimated casual market is one such target. Games like EchoChrome and LBP are the inroads, but you're not gonna win any fans in that segment until they show a willingness to play nice with the price. The announced cuts were a bold step (tho not quite enough) and by rescinding that price point the bait-n-switch is gonna turn off a lot of already reluctant consumers.
If I owned Sony, I'd drop the price to 399 right now, add a billing structure to their online service, and put the entire Sony movie library for download ASAP. MS is already making a killing with Live and the VC on the Wii is a huge draw to the system. Free online content is a great selling point, but Live has shown that a subscription plan won't get rejected out of hand. Even if Sony swallows a huge(er) chunk of the upfront cost, the real money in this generation is going to come in the form of micropayments for downloadable content. Since Sony has announced that they're going to be selling retail titles (not minigames) via download, they're going to poison their retail model even further.
It's about time one of the big three makes the jump to digital distribution. Sony looks to be out of the gate, but without the established install base their "retail partners" like EB are going to become less and less interested in giving them floorspace when they're not making the profits from sales (and resales) of shiny plastic disks. It's make or break time, and if they don't get burned by the customers, their distributers are going to leave them out in the cold.