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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."
-dave
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Stop using 'SKU' in news stories and posts. The word has no meaning outside internal retail outlets and distributors. Saying it makes you sound like a marketdroid.
Not a typewriter
They do lose some compatibility though.
You mad
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.
1. Load gun.
2. Aim at foot.
3. Shoot.
4. Repeat as often as possible.
(Yes, I know, "Step 5: Profit!" should go there, but seriously, have you looked at their quarterly reports recently?)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Oh please, you know exactly why people are upset about this. It's become clear you're a Sony astroturfer. You've posted in the other story on this topic and people were pretty clear why there were upset about it.
But to make it clear, it's that "cut the price of the 80GB console" part. There's no proof that's going to happen. People have been clamoring for a PS3 price cut for ages. There's clearly demand for the PS3, but not at the $600 price point. People have been wanting to see a pricecut.
So what Sony has announced is that there's a pricecut, but then they're going to sell a version that has about $20 worth of storage extra and a version that's not as backwards compatible with PS2 and PS games. (That's assuming $1/GB, which is high - it's closer to $0.75/GB.)
So, ultimately, Sony is announcing a new, worse version of the PS3 for the same price. That's why people are upset.
That assumes, of course, you're interested in playing PS2 games on the PS3. At this point in time, with the PS2 game library dwarfing the PS3 game library, it's a fair assumption that people would want to do that. You can also debate how much worse the PS2/PS emulation is, especially since the new emulation is already used to enable upscaling in the existing model.
However, this still comes off as Sony saying that they're selling a new, worse model for the same price, while trying to ditch the old model. Not completely true, but it sure sounds like it.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
You know... a lot of the problems that Sony has had recently are not necessarily the action they took. Discounting this version of the product so you can introduce an improved* version can be a great move. The quote in the summary brings up a good point, though - it's about their PR! They had a chance to make this great PR, or at least "neutral", but they instead choose to confuse everybody with this idiocy.
I think this has been typical of a lot of their boneheaded moves in the last few years; they have some brain-damaged idea they want to accomplish with the PR, and end up totally screwing the entire announcement. Someone needs to fire the entire PR department over there. It's really damaging their reputation in ways way above and beyond their "normal fuck-ups".
(*) - for some definitions of "improved", which is not really relevant to this point
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I think that their best bet would be to sell the currently available 60 GB models at $500 until their supply runs out and then immediately drop the 80 GB model down to $500, or possibly even lower in time for the holidays. Sony has a lot of inventory to move and if they're hoping to meet their sales goals that they set at E3, they really need to drop the price down to about $400.
I can easily see Microsoft releasing a new version of their hardware in time for the holidays and having a firesale of their own on the old models around the holiday season, which would really cut into Sony's sales. Sony is going to look bad selling at $500 when you can get an Xbox 360 at $300.
I honestly think that Sony should slash prices down to at least $400, which would get a lot of consumers to purchase one. This would help to turn things around for them and to catch up to the lead of the Xbox 360, but more importantly it would give Blu-ray a big advantage over HD-DVD and might allow that war to come to an end. I think the short term loses would be worth it in the long term.
If I was Howard Stringer the first thing I would do is fire the entire marketing staff. So far their advertising and handling of everything related to the PS3 has been bungled. From the crying baby advertisements that were outweirded only by Sega's Dreamcast campaign, the early arrogance in the press, to the latest price cut, its not a price cut debacle there hasnt been one element of their PR that has worked in their favor.
Hey, I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that this *isn't* the PR departments fault. I imagine that Sony execs do whatever bullheaded nonsense they want (like this fiasco) and then when PR goes, "Whoa, whoa! If you do that you're really going to piss people off!" they just get a cold reply of, "Well, we're going ahead with it. You're PR. You fix it."
And that's why you see Sony PR guys always desperately spouting whatever bullshit they can muster to defend Sony. They know Sony is being ludacris, but their job depends on them somehow spinning Sony's actions in a positive light.
I mean, otherwise, you'd think for like $500 a call, they could call anyone of us and we'd be like, "Ummm... you know Sony, I just really don't think that's a good idea, you know, to screw your fan base like that," and they'd be like, "Oh... really? Ok, cool. I guess we won't do it then. Thanks for the advice."
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
No, and I haven't even bothered... basically FFXI runs just like on the PS2... you'll get upsampled, but if you want the gorgeous graphics of the 360, you'll NEED a 360 (or PC)
I'd kill for a PS3 port of it, but I know I'm one of the few.
Here, as I understand it, is the situation. Hopefully, if I get anything wrong someone will correct me...
Backwards compatibility goes down with the newer 80GB US models.
As others have pointed out, the newer systems lack an in-built Emotion Engine chip, so they rely on software emulation rather than hardware emulation.
The emulation is decent, but it's far from perfect. Sony themselves quote a figure of 88 percent compatibility with the software emulation rather than 100 percent with the hardware emulation.
And, even amongst those 88 percent of titles that work there are some glitches: it's not the case that 88 percent of titles work perfectly while 12 percent have some problems or won't run, rather it's the case that 12 percent won't run at all and 88 percent will run to some degree.
You can read that many ways, but to me it seems to suggest that 88 percent is a marketing person's figure more than anything else: if a game won't get past a fixed point, it has audio or visual glitches all over the place, or if it falls over all the time then you're stretching things if you consider that game in your 88 percent.
Of course, Sony isn't exactly advertising the fact that the newer 80GB models aren't as backwardly compatible as their predecessors. Granted, it won't matter to everyone, but it will matter to some, and those people won't thank Sony for their penny-pinching and shortsightedness.
I don't know what the hell is going on with Sony. When it came to the original PlayStation they ran a flawless campaign and sucked millions of new users into the console market. With the PS2 they didn't put a foot wrong and cleaned up again. But with the PS3 it seems like they've decided to see how much they can piss away the goodwill generated by their previous two generations and opted for one boneheaded move after another.
If they're not careful they're going to end up as yet another sorry story on fuckedcompany.com.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I believe it's a choice. The "upscaling" in the old ones amounted to rolling out the software emulation and giving you the option to run under it.
More info, from Wikipedia's PS3 page:
On March 20, 2007 Sony released a compatibility list; 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games (72%) released in Europe had noticeable issues, minor issues or no known issues, with the remainder being incompatible with the console.
As I understand it, the European PS3's only had software emulation. So, by Sony's own admission, backwards compatibility is at 72 percent, and may actually be even lower than that.
If I had any Sony stock I would have sold it a long time ago. These guys are finding new lows of stupidity every other day.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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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While I personally agree that Motorstorm (at least at first) feels like a slow, boring version of Excite Truck, the two games aren't really comparable. Despite both being arcade offroad racers, they are very different games. Excite Truck is a fast and insane with huge jumps. Large parts of the game are played in the air, and often, you don't control your car as much as trying to constantly do damage control at superhigh speeds.
Motorstorm is much more of a simulation. You have to read the tracks, try to negotiate the dirt and your opponents correctly, take your own vehicle into account when deciding where to go. It's a lot slower and a lot more tactical. I can see why some people prefer Motorstorm over Excite Truck.
They are both awesome games, in my opinion, and both are worth owning.
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.
It's long past time to call Sony's tactics for exactly what they are, from the PS3's beginning to right now: "Bait and switch." First, they released the $500 20GB version in such small quantities that people couldn't find them, then they discontinued them completely. Now, they've managed to convince people that selling a 60GB console at $500 constitutes a "price cut" (kids, if a console is $500/600 at launch and is $500/600 today, there's been no price cut), only to admit that they've discontinued that model, too - with every reason to believe, by the way, that the new 80GB model is costing them significantly less to manufacture than the 60GB model! The PS3's marketing from day one has been a scam, attempting to make consumers pay more for the PS3 than they expected. Bait. And. Switch.