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."

Comments

How Things Might have been Done Better

[MankyD]

So in those meetings next week, Sony will have cause to look back and consider how things might have been done better."

Not to be too cruel, but I think that Sony already had several reasons to do this with the PS3.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Stop Saying 'SKU'

[Anonymous Coward]

This message is encoded ROT0. Decoding is punishable by death under the DMCA. Stop using ROT0 and DMCA in post sigs. ROT0 has no meaning in terms of sigs, and DMCA has no significance outside the US.

Sony's marketing plan:

[Hawthorne01]

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?)

Re:Great Move by Sony

[_xeno_]

This will spark interest in the 60GB console, and when all the supplies are moved they will cut the price of the 80GB console to $499. I don't see why people are upset about this.

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.

Re:Stop Saying 'SKU'

[MaineCoon]

The term is used extensively in the games industry as well.

When a game is being developed for multiple consoles, each target platform version of the game (the PS3 version, the 360 version, etc) is referred to as a different SKU, even though it may be developed simultaneously and we aren't making the game differently for the different consoles (beyond platform-specific code and perhaps minor asset changes).

Can Sonys Marketing Dept Possbily Do Worse?

[grapeape]

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.

New Rumor

[mrshowtime]

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?!"

Compatibility goes down...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:Backwards Compatibility

[Wordplay]

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...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:More info...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Over a quarter of games aren't going to run. Many of the rest are going to have some problems. What are the odds that all your favourite games won't be among them.

When a company sells a product as being backward compatible then it should be backward compatible. For all titles, not just some. I don't care if they acheive that through hardware emulation or software emulation (there's no reason why Sony shouldn't be able to make a 100 percent effective software emulator, they do have unlimited access to all the hardware, source code, etc) but if they make a promise to their end-users then they should stick to it.

In Sony's case, that promise was broken from day one in Europe and South Korea. Units for those markets never had in-built Emotion Engine chips, so not even early adopters in those markets had the chance to buy a totally compatible unit.

Notice how Sony didn't pull that stunt out of the gate in either Japan or the US? Why do you think that might have been? Perhaps because it felt that it couldn't pull that kind of shit in either of those markets? Or perhaps it thought that if European and Korean gamers were crazy enough to pay its inflated prices (£425 in the UK, which is $850!) then it could shaft them further by removing hardware to cut costs.

Now it seems, by stealth (because they sure aren't trumpeting the fact), Sony have done the same in the US. And, somehow, me pointing it out is offensive to you?

I've owned more consoles/gaming PCs than most in my time. I have (or have had) an Atari 2600, a Commodore 128, an Atari ST-FM, an Atari STE, two Sega Megadrives (Genesis to you), two Atari Lynx (one of each model), a PC Engine, a PlayStation, a Dreamcast, and a PlayStation 2. I've also lived with friends that owned other consoles. There are few major console titles that I haven't played.

Yet so far, I've yet to buy either a PS3, an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo Wii. Why? Because, so far, none of them has really engaged me in any way. I'm trying so hard to want to buy another Sony console but Sony itself seems to be coming up with more and more reasons why I shouldn't ever do that.

It's a shame. All Sony had to do to earn my money was to not try to rip me off with a less than compatible unit (why didn't a single European PS3 have hardware emulation) and a price tag that was, even after accounting for taxes, 45 percent more than US gamers were paying for the same system.

Thanks for the fanboi Sony vs Microsoft rant though. The all-caps "SONY"s were a nice touch.

Re:More info...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

To be fair, the 360 doesn't have great compatibility either (Wikipedia puts it at 42% with the July update). However, there are some differences:

• Despite the fact that the 360's compatiblity is only 42%, the vast majority of that list works more or less perfectly. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions, but Microsoft appears to have at least tested the titles that they support
• Microsoft never represented backwards compatibility as a major feature. Sony has taken every opportunity to trash Microsoft's poor compatibility and play up their better support. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Sony is a lot more humble

Honestly, I think that the BC on the non-EE PS3s is perfectly acceptable. Most people who are buying a PS3 at this point already have a PS2. Those who buy the console when it is more mature (e.g. cheaper) will have a good library of PS3 titles to choose from, and BC may be better by then.

However, Sony's marketing is shit. The PS3 is actually a pretty damned good console. It has a lot of nice features (Blu-Ray, Linux, web browser, upgradable HDD, built-in WiFi) that the 360 lacks, but it has two problems: it's too damned expensive, and Sony's hubris has shot themselves in the foot.

It's OK to be enthusiastic about your product. But don't piss on us by doing a non-price-drop-price-drop. You're clearing out old inventory of 60GB PS3s, which is fine, but don't dick us around by pretending it's a price cut and then later "clarifying" that it's a limited time thing. This is a firesale. Don't dress it up another way because you produced too damn many 60GB PS3s and they are going to take months to sell at your current lousy rate.

Your hardware is fine, Sony. But your customers will only take so much shit.

WTFH

[shoptroll]

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.