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Sony CEO Confirms Limited $499 PS3 Stock
If you were confused about yesterday's stock announcement, you wouldn't be the only one. Thankfully Kaz Harai, SCEI CEO, has clarified the situation: the $499 60GB PlayStation 3 is a limited offering. They'll only be selling it here in the states until their current stock of the system is cleared out, at which point the only SKU remaining in the states will be the $599 80GB + Motorstorm bundle. The catch is that there is probably enough stock in hand for several months of sales at this price; hence the confusion yesterday about a 'fire sale'. Hirai confirmed this to a Norwegian videogame news site, and the video of the interview is available online. For some perspective, Next Generation has a commentary piece on this strange matter. "Now Sony looks as though it's been spinning consumers. The smart thing to have done would have been to come out and say that the 60Gig version is being discounted and discontinued, and that the bells-n-whistles PS3 at $599 is better value than ever. That didn't happen, and what many have seen as a pretty successful E3 for Sony has been marred by confusion over the future of the platform's strategy. So in those meetings next week, Sony will have cause to look back and consider how things might have been done better."
On Monday they announced the price cut of the console. Gamers were excited.
On Wednesday they showed off whats to come to the console. Gamers were amazed.
By Thursday, early reports were coming in that the price drop was limited.
At this point we were all fooled by Sony once again. They showed us all their new products and I will admit some of which look really cool. Then they tried to slip this under the radar without anyone noticing. That would of worked ten years ago without much notice but its not that easy today
Whats worst of all though, when their done selling the 60gig model, all you have is a 80gig model which is actually more crippled then then the launch model which had the emotion engine for backward compatibility.
There is a new rumor that the 360 will drop to $199 for the core and $250 for the "real" 360. If this rumor holds true, then Sony might as well pack it in, as there is no way a $599 system will be able to compete against a system that is 90% it's capability at more than 1/3rd the price. Sony Bots have been touting the "Incredible capability" of the PS3 and what an awesome value it is. My biggest question is why the PS3 is not significantly better than the 360, especially given the year's lead time? I own a PS3 and a 360, so don't mark me as a flamebait. I am still smarting after this past Christmas day when my friends (all in their 30's, who have owned every game system ever, like me) came over to see the PS3 and play Resistance: Fall of Man. They could not stop laughing at me and the game. The consensus was, "You paid $800 for this?!"
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
As I see it, the XBox 360 is only about 1/6 as good as the PS3, and isn't that much cheaper.
First, the price: Microsoft charges for XBox Live. A couple of years of XBox live subscription pretty much wipes out any price advantage over the PS3. And I suspect the PS3 will continue to see price drops, but XBox Live will not. So, in the long run, the PS3 will be a bit cheaper. Not by much, but by a bit.
As far as the "goodness" of the system, the 360 is limited by the DVD, *not* by the hardware. The 360 has a better GPU, but the PS3 has quite a bit better CPU power. (Now, taking advantage of the cell architecture is a challenge; but the PS3 has quite a bit more raw horsepower than the 360.)
The 360 has about 8G of data per game. As it is, game companies often have to figure out how to fit their game into 8G. There are sacrifices, and those sacrifices are in *content*. The textures are scaled back, there's less video available, etc.
Blu-Ray can store up to 50G. That's about 6 times more storage than DVD. Sure, many games won't require more than 8G; but many will. Now, will they require 50G? Not many. But, *the option is there.* Game companies no longer have to sacrifice content just to squeeze the game onto a DVD.
So, by my reckoning, the PS3 is more than ( 100/90 )% of the 360. Quite a bit more. And since a lot of the value is on-line play, the price difference isn't that great, in the long run (though the upfront cost of the PS3 is daunting, for sure).
Sony has built a system that will take time to reach its full potential. That means the games will take more advantage of the system, and get better, just like they did with the PS2. Compare the first Rayman title with later titles like God of War or the later Ratchet & Clank titles. R:FOM is akin to the first PS2 Rayman title, in that it hardly makes use of the system.
Not that I'd pay $600 for a PS3. But I'm not a huge gamer.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You know, it's no wonder the PS3 is selling as bad as it is. How can anyone take this company or division seriously when you have an executive in Europe saying "they're doing this to clear out units", the American executive saying "it's not a fire sale" and then the head executive in Japan saying "the Euro guy was right but he forgot to mention we have enough stock to last a few months". I'll admit Nintendo's done some stuff like this before, like when people were trying to find out if the Wii was region-free, but when you have a system that isn't selling, it's not the time to be displaying confusion and incompetence of this magnitude.
It's really starting to get really hard to understand the truth in any news that comes from Sony these days. These guys should run for Congress.
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From a PR perspective, I completely agree that Sony has screwed the pooch on managing consumer opinions, at least within the industry. Outside, however, the average consumer just sees a $499 60GB PS3 on sale.
I disagree with the people that insist Sony is driving for some "magic" $599 price point. If it were, I think the sales spike the will see from this price drop will convince them otherwise. The reality for Sony is that they have a huge number of 60GB systems collecting dust on store shelves. The still-born 20GB is largely vanished, and the 80GB isn't even available yet.
Now, if Sony was to announce the 80GB system at the same $499 that the 60GB has just been reduced to, how many of those 60GB systems would they be likely to sell, now or in the future? Not many, I'd wager, unless they planned to drop the price on those even further. The company would be foolish to do that, especially since the 80GB won't be around until August. The smart thing to do -- and what I suspect is Sony's plan all along here -- is to release the 80GB at $599 with the no-longer-in-production 60GB at $499 until the 60GB units are either depleted or nearly impossible to find (as opposed to now, where it's the only thing available!), then get another PR boost with another price drop lowering the 80GB to $499 as well.
So if an extra 20GB is worth an extra $100 or a few months waiting for you, go for it. For me, 60GB is plenty, and the hard drive is already pretty damn easy to upgrade way past the 80GB anyway, if one were so inclined.