Sony has announced that it will be lowering the price of its Blu-Ray players again, driven by high demand and lower production costs. The recent cut took $100 off the cost of the players, bringing them down to about half the cost at launch, 6 months ago.
Fabulous. Go, Sony, go.
Now, to frame it in terms that I give a rat's ass about, what does this mean for the cost of the PS3? The PS3 is so ridiculously expensive compared to other nextgen gaming systems because Sony used it to leverage their position in the battle over the next DVD format. By building a Blu-Ray player into every PS3, they were able to increase the number of households that have adopted Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. However, the increased expense slowed adoption of the PS3.
The justification for the higher price on the PS3 was the expense of including a Blu-Ray player. If those now cost half what they did 6 months ago, when will we see a corresponding drop in PS3 prices? This would be a huge benefit to Sony, so I can't imagine that they will delay it any longer than necessary. The higher price has been the single biggest complaint about the new system, and if Sony wants to maintain their dominance of the gaming market, they have to do something about it sooner rather than later.
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9 comments:
Word!
And maybe since they're losing market share to the Wii, that'll be extra incentive.
It would be insane not to lower the price of the PS3. Even if the blue ray was still so expensive they would need to lower it because no one is buying it. That and make some really cool games for the platform, which they seem not to have done.
What the fuck are you talking about, Dead Spot?
I have an Xbox 360 and no desire at all to see any HD DVDs, as the resolution on my TV is just a little better than one of those old pixelvision cameras. No I take that back, it's more like one of those news shows when they pixel out someone to keep their identity a secret, only the entire screen is pixeled out.
Another bad sign for the PS3 is that the Wii just buried them in Japan.
Yeah, Sony needs to slash prices and get some decent post-launch titles out the door.
The best game developers have always put out titles for PlayStation, but because they launched last, PS3 games are earlier in the development cycle than for other platforms. Sony has always had the biggest library of titles, and they've again put out a machine that is backward-compatible with their previous games as long as developers followed the development guidelines. In a year having games available is not going to be an issue, assuming, of course, that they can get people to buy the hardware in the first place.
That high entry price is killing them, and they have to do something about it. If they can halve the price of Blu-Ray players, then the hardware is cheap enough that they can cut the price on PS3s, and they need to do it soon. Sony's both a licencer and a first party developer. Even if they were to take a loss on the hardware, they'll more than make up the difference during the life of the console through fees and game sales.
Wait... what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Republicans suck.
I'd go for a PS3 is they didn't cost so damned much. The Wii is fun with it's fancy schmancy controller but really, the graphics are pretty crap.
Spot,
Well, their timing stinks. Procrastinator Junior is graduating grade school and I can't swing the PS3 without starving us for about five days.
The backward compatability is crucial because there are a boatload of games that I want to play that are exclusive to the PS 2.
Dale,
The Wii is more in my ballpark, but even the cinematics for the new Legend of Zelda game had flicker. How can you have flicker for cinematics? That's so N64.
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