(Price) cut, that’s not a wrap
Friday 13 July 2007 @ 7:30 pm | By unknownwarrior33If you're new here and you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, and browse around for more fun stuff. Thanks for visiting!
It was a shock to some when Sony cut the price of the PS3; others expected it. It certainly drove up sales…at first. But Sony made two crucial errors and two non-crucial error in the price cut that I predict will keep it from making a long-term impact.
The first crucial error was that they only cut the price to 500 dollars. 500 dollars is still 100 dollars more than the Xbox 360 Premium, and with Blu-ray players becoming cheaper, that angle won’t convince people much longer. It’s also double the price of Wii, which is still killing the PS3 in sales and gaining on the 360. Also, the 360 and Wii are likely to get price cuts in the near future as well, so this may not make a whole lot of difference for long.
Second, they released the 80 gigabyte version at the original price of 600 bucks. That means the now-500 dollar unit has become the “gimped” version, and that may push it in the direction of the version that originally cost 500. Furthermore, Kaz Hirai said they’re going to phase out the 60 GB version. If that’s the case, people will once again have to pay 600 bucks for a PS3.
The first non-crucial error was bundling a game with the 80 GB version. The biggest reason why this is a problem is that Nintendo already did it; copying Nintendo the first time around made Sony look really bad. That’s one aspect. The other is that looking at game sales in Japan will tell you that bundling Wii Sports with Wii probably didn’t make a huge difference; they didn’t bundle it in Japan and it’s been one of the top selling games over there since launch.
The second non-crucial error was not extending this price cut to Europe. I say it’s a non-crucial error because North America and Japan (which got a price cut right at the beginning) are bigger markets (especially combined) than Europe. That said, bundling a game with the system in Europe will not boost sales as much as a price cut would, and that was a mistake.
I say this not to incite a flame war; that’s the LAST thing I want to do. I say it because I want to quell the flame wars that the price cut no doubt started; this post doesn’t say that the PS3 is doomed, only that I don’t believe it’s in a significantly better place than it was before.
What value do my predictions hold, you ask? After last year’s E3 I predicted that the high price, Sony’s PR (see my last post), and focus on Blu-ray over games would hurt the PS3’s sales. Now that it’s out, it’s trailing far behind its competitors. True, that was an obvious prediction, but not so obvious that a lot of people didn’t disagree with me.
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The price is a mistake? What? even at 600 dollars, the price of a fully “pimped out” PS3 with all first party accessories is cheaper than an xbox 360 premium with all the accessories, not to mention the fact that it always has been the cheapest blu-ray player on the market.
The 60 GB version? Gimped? Fun fact, the 80GB version has LESS hardware inside due to the nnew upgraded drive, so technically IT is the gimped one.
Nintendo bundled a game with their console first? Are you fucking kidding me? Is that another part of the Wii’s innovative new console? Manufacturers have bundles games with consoles since the beginning of TIME, so people wont go out and buy another console because it has cheaper games. Shit, there was a day that the consoles only had one game, and guess what… it was bundled.
No price cut in Europe? Eh, might cost Sony in the long run, but nobody bought PS3’s there as vehemently as in the states and Canada, so perhaps Sony doesn’t actually consider them a large enough market, god knows with Japan and the Americas all buying PS3s, not to mention their other demographic Sony really doesn’t need the extra money (but it’d be nice I’m sure)
Don’t wanna incite a flamewar? Don’t post blatant fanboyism. This is a blog for news and reviews, not waving a company’s e-peen all over the front page.
I seem to be DarkDiamond’s resident Nintendo fan, but I hope that won’t detract from the importance of my message here.
While I put unity over my own opinions, I do have opinions. Very strong ones. For example, I hate Sony. It wasn’t always this way; I’ve hated Sony for only about a year now. It all started at last year’s E3, when Sony announced that the PS3 controller would have motion-sensing. This announcement generated tons of backlash for Sony, because it was a clear rip-off of Nintendo’s Wii Remote. Then came the comments about how you’re not a true gamer if you don’t work a second job to afford a PS3 and that people would buy it even without any launch games. People do not like being taken advantage of, as the negative response to these comments showed.
It’s all gone downhill from there, with racist billboards and bloody sheep carcasses, among many other things. It was enough to stop me and many other people from purchasing a PS3; while I wanted one pre-E3, I wanted a 360 post-E3 (I wanted a Wii from the beginning, and it was the first of the three that I got; I got a 360 later). Sony needs to remember that a high price point and lack of games will stop someone from buying your console at first, but bad PR will stop people like me from buying your console at all.
P.S. When I mentioned my “last post” in my last post, I actually meant THIS post. See, I wrote this before I wrote “(Price) cut, that’s not a wrap” but apparently forgot to actually post it.
This is not fanboyism, and I resent your assault on my opinions. Notice that my post does not attack Sony or any of my fellow gamers. It simply states my opinion on this recent event. And I want to defend those opinions, so I will respond to your comment point-by-point.
First, while it is true that the Xbox 360 would be more expensive than the 600 dollar PS3 with all the equivalent accessories, not everybody wants every single one of those features. The difference is that you can still buy an Xbox 360 without all of them, so the most used feature (the actual gaming) comes out cheaper.
Second, I did not say the 60 GB version was “gimped”. I said it was the “gimped version” COMPARED TO the 80 GB version.
Third, I agree I should have made myself clearer, but I did not say that Nintendo was the first company to bundle a game with a system. I meant that Nintendo was the first to do so this generation, and the first in a long while, too. While I can see where you might have gotten your interpretation of my comment, you should not have assumed my meaning to the point that you got as angry as you seemed to about it.
Next, as the PS3 is not selling as well as Sony predicted, and they still lose money on every console, Sony’s gaming division does indeed need extra money. Compared to other systems, not a lot of people are buying the PS3 anywhere. You seem to be under the impression that it’s selling like hotcakes, and while it temporarily did so after the price cut, it has a lot of catching up to do.
As for Europe, you’re probably right: Sony probably DOESN’T consider Europe a major market, given the lack of price cut and the late release. But that makes the problem even bigger, as the lack of price cut will only increase the animosity Sony incited from European gamers when the news of the late release came around.
Finally, notice that this post is filed under “Columns”. This site is not just for news and reviews, but also for column-type posts like this one. Discussing an issue facing one company is not fanboyism at all. If I started saying that the PS3 was a piece of shit and Sony sucked, that would be fanboyism. For more about the difference, you might want to check out my recent post entitled “The Console Wars Mentality”.