Friday, July 06, 2007

Sony wobbling on price cut of the PS3

Yes, No, Maybe, I don't know

Sony is denying a price cut for the PS3 once again. After months of speculation from industry analysts and earlier saying they had been looking in to adjusting the price of the console. Further fueling rumors of a massive price cut as much as $200.Sony did release a system with bundled Hot Shots Golf 5 which dropped the price in Japan, but no word on if that bundle or the adjusted price would make it any where else.

Ryoji Chubachi President of Sony Corporation and CEO of Sony’s Global Electronics Business told Reuters in an interview appearing on their website July 6th.

"At present we have no plans," to cut the PS3 price,


Circuit City meanwhile seems to be giving would be customers of the console a break on the 15th of July by lowering the price $100 effective through the 21st. There is also a deal From http://www.bluraysavings.com/ to get five free Blu-Ray movies, from a list of specific movies, with purchase of a Blu-Ray player / Game console (read PS3).

Speculation on my part is that is more than likely where the $100 off comes from. It's just to convenient for them to do a deal on the PS3 when there is a promotion for Blu-Ray coinciding.

This is just a rumor right now as the ad has yet to be released to the public. Where did the info come from a poster on dvdtalk.com’s forum that is apparently very reliable with these kind of postings.

The question of whether or not Sony needs to or should drop the price on the PS3 is a hard argued debate at this point. There is a chance they could announce a price drop at the upcoming E3. More than likely any price drop will be in line with Circuit City’s ad at around a $100. This would give them a little ground on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 brining the gap in price very close to the highest priced SKU of the Xbox 360 Elite coming in at $480. There is still a chance than Microsoft could drop the price on the 360 at E3 as well.

During the recent Ubidays event held by Ubisoft in Paris France GamesIndustry.biz spoke with Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot. In the article published June 20th 2007 GamesIndustry.biz asked Guillemot about a price drop for the ps3 and his responses were quite interesting.

GamesIndustry.biz: You hit the headlines recently for calling on Sony to cut the price of PS3...

Yves Guillemot: I was just saying that in the last generation, we had machines that were at a lower price and they were selling more. It's just something to consider for all the manufacturers, that the price of the machine has a huge impact on the number of machines sold.

Everybody has to remember that volumes are very dependent on price. I know the platform holders all know that, so now we have to wait for them to see when they want to achieve those numbers.

GamesIndustry.biz: Do you think cutting the price before Christmas would be a good idea?

Yves Guillemot: It depends on the volumes they want to achieve this year, on their policy. For publishers, we want as many machines sold as possible, so for us the lower the price the better.

[Sony has] sold a machine that is actually expensive to build at the right price for consumers. It's just that if we want more consumers, we'll have to have a price that will make more people come in.
So, reading this line of questioning, I for one am still questioning whether Blu-ray was really a good idea to be placed in the machine. It still seems to be the major reason that the cost to produce PS3s is so high. Yes Sony did put DVD in the PS2, but DVD had been around for a while longer than Blu-ray at that time, and wasn’t part of a format war like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are. Don’t forget UMD movies failed as well as Beta Max tapes. Sony doesn’t have a great track record with their own formats.

We will definitely be watching this year’s E3 intently to see if they do drop the bomb during the Sony Press Conference Wednesday the 11th starting at 11:30am. Remember E3 is July 11 – 13, 2007.

Have fun and play to win -Brymstone



Update: After calling local Circuit City stores today I got no confirmation of the ad which I expected not to. However I did find out from one manager that Sony has to approve ANY price drop before it can be done. That would add to the speculation of a price drop announcement at E3 being before the date of the flier. One manager said they were aware of the Blu-ray movie deal but were not offering it with the PS3 just a standard player.