The PlayStation 3 price cut saga has become long and grueling, with various industry figures demanding one and Sony consistently refuting such demands time and time again. Now it's Jack Tretton's turn to defend Sony's bullish decision, declaring that the idea of a price cut is "short-term thinking." Yep, once again we're back to that old routine.
"People are having short-term thinking -- the platform is not even three years old. It was USD 599; it's now USD 399," boasts Tretton. "The focus on pricing is something we appreciate, but you have to have the conviction and the confidence that you are on the right path for the long term and ultimately you'll get all the consumers you want.
"You won't get them all day one, but we're looking to get them over a ten-year period. It's going to take different things to get different consumers ... We could've come out with a PlayStation 2.5 for $299 or less, and in the first two or three years it would sell extremely well. But there would be a point where people would be going, 'I am not really seeing the incremental leap.'"
You know how some religious people use the "God moves in mysterious ways" excuse to justify anything and everything? I'm beginning to think that "the ten-year cycle" is being used in very much the same was by Sony. It's basically their way of getting out of every logistical loophole and BS marketing move, and you can't really argue against it because they'll simply stroke their beards and say, "Aaah, but we have a plan. Don't you see? Aaaah."
I am officially sick and tired of the "ten year" excuse. It's not ten years from now. It's the year 2009. Shut up and drop the price, raise the price, do anything, so long as it's not spouting more ridiculous horsesh*t.
Contest:
4:20 PM on 07.08.2009
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Why?
That's all I want to know. Why does Sony need to drop the price more than the already have? What is the huge problem? Maybe i'm totally retarded, but I don't see what the crisis is here.
Maybe if someone could link me to a nice pie chart or something.
...mmmmmm...pie.
Why wouldn't they have a PS4 in the next few years? Just because the PS3 has a 10 year life cycle doesn't mean they are going to wait 10 years for a new console. The PS2 is still going strong. PS3 will still be kicking when the PS4 comes out.
Hell, the PS2 will prolly still be kicking when the PS4 comes out. lol
And this "ten year cycle" thing has become such a crutch it's pathetic. Sony's entire PR department should be fired for the mess it's making of a great system.
That'll drive sales up.
Right now, they're losing money hand over fist on the PS3. That tech is expensive. People don't give them enough credit for including stuff like Wi-Fi and a hard drive in every box. Microsoft charges you obscene amounts for that stuff on the side, but since it's a la carte, it's okay. As long as it's not on the initial price tag, people don't care that they'll ultimately be spending TONS more.
I'm not trying to turn this into a 360 vs PS3 thing, but dude... C'mon. Microsoft gives you a machine that has no Wi-Fi, no hard drive, that'll break in a few months, and then nickel and dime you to play your games in multiplayer and people act like Microsoft "gets it" and Sony is arrogant and out-of-date.
Fuck it. Sony really is giving you a great value, way more than they have to, or even SHOULD. They're already losing a shit ton of money on every PS3. And what'll they lose if they drop the price $50? $350 million. Drop it $100 and they'll lose $700 million. Close to $1 billion. And people act like Sony is arrogant.
They have a bottom line to meet. They have stockholders. Activision does too, and could care less about Sony's financial concerns. They're the richest publisher in the world and only want to get richer. Sony is struggling to minimize their billions of dollars worth of losses. They've got to appease so many different groups that all have conflicting issues that it's a wonder that they haven't just scrapped the PS3 altogether and just said "whatever, we aren't making anymore PS3s. We're losing money on them. We'll support the people that have them already long enough to milk more money out of them, but then we're done with the console business."
So it's just really tiring hearing the same people call Sony "arrogant" and acting like Sony gives a shit about whether they're on top of the arbitrary console wars. They don't. They're putting on that arrogant attitude for their shareholders. What do you expect them to do? Come out and be like "yeah, we're in trouble. You shouldn't invest in us."
The corner they've backed themselves into by trying to make the PS3 too awesome instead of just rushing it out the door like Microsoft did with the 360 is unfortunate for everybody, but mostly it's Sony who's hurting here.
Good god, I'd really love it if people actually thought of things from Sony's point of view once in awhile instead of just acting like Sony is some evil corporation that wants to keep the PS3's price high to spite poor people or something.
that's honestly got to be one of the most uneducated, backwater, asinine and retarded thing I think i've ever seen. and i've seen the entire AMV Hell Saga. In a recession do you think ANYONE is thinking "hey let's make a brand new product"? I hope your twelve because no grown man would ever think that no matter how dumb.
Its called the MGS4/KZ2 bundle.
PS3 price = $300
2 trpple A games = $100
= $400
Need more cheese for your whine?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9401417&type=product&id=1218099072505&AID=10597222&PID=3026717&SID=9669__2_9__&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Folspage.jsp%3FskuId%3D9401417%26type%3Dproduct%26id%3D1218099072505&ref=39&loc=01
can we stop whining now?
Anyway, I don't get the price cut idea. Crunshii, you are right on that point.
They are losing money on each console (I believe $40), and they only make money if people buy games or blu-rays for it. How could they drop the price if they are already losing money? A reply would be cool Jim as I am genuinely curious, is it possible for them to drop the price? As I don't have any figures top be sure :/
Sony has said that they don't make money selling hardware, but software instead.
So drop the price of the PS3, more people buy your console, more people buy games for your console, and you can make more money.
You act like if Sony dropped the price, they'd just be making less money or something. Right now, at the price it's at now, they're already losing money. They'd like to raise the price if they could. So to have so many people clamoring for them to drop the price is probably pretty scary for them. They'll be going from losing an obscene amount of money to losing billions.
It's serious stuff. You really shouldn't take it so lightly, like all they've got to do is just hit the big red "price drop" button in Sony HQ and set everything right.
If you want a PS3. Pay for it.
If you don't like the price. Don't pay for it.
You should be happy with your decision and stop blaming Sony for your inability to own a PS3. It's really starting to sound to me like people are of the opinion that they can't have a PS3 because Sony won't drop the price. This is childish and inappropriate.
If the price of the PS3 is hurting the games industry as a whole in some way, then i'm missing it. But that's the only way I could see justification in calling them out. Otherwise, all it is, is people bitching that they can't afford it. Sorry, there's lots of things that I can't afford. But I don't cry about it.
And are publishers like Activision losing money on the PS3 games they do put out? If so, then they need to make a business decision about that. And that business decision will then affect Sony's business, so they'll have to make a business decision. But they shouldn't make threats.
And if publishers like Activision aren't losing money on the PS3 games they make, then what's the problem? Sony should not be expected to bow down to publisher demands, when that publisher is making money off of their product. And Sony shouldn't be expected to bow down to consumer demands when Sony is already losing money on each console.
I think Sony's biggest challenge is how do they adjust their marketing. Cause if they marketed the PS3 more effectively, then people might not feel like they were paying too much for it. I paid the $600 for my 60 gig when it came out. And I feel like it is still worth every penny. But that's just my opinion.
Let's say I can sell you a cup for $5 that costs me $9 to make. My friend makes lemonade and agrees to pay me $2 from his revenue because let's face it, who's buying that lemonade if they don't have a cup? When you buy that cup and lemonade, I'm only making $7. It cost me $9 to make that cup. It's not worth it.
It's a totally FUBAR situation for Sony. They need more money to drop the price, but the way to get that money is buy having more people with PS3s, which is only going to happen when they drop the price, which they can't afford to do yet.
100% truth right there.
buy it and enjoy, don't and go play the 360, Wii, DS, psp or whatever keeps you gaming and shut up about it.but seriously the bitching needs to end.
The real question is to al lyou Ergonomic economists!
Whatcomesfirst... the chicken or the egg?
God I WISH!
Also we know there will be a price drop this year, because at the playstation event that Sony held in April, where no journalist were allow in, they told many of the dev's that there is one coming down the pipeline. So hold your god damn horses and relax.
The sole feature that Sony uses as a justification for the $399 price point is the HDD and tha erodes in cost every single day. What does a bare 160gb drive cost at retail? $30. Yet Sony ramps the 160 model up another $100 by tossing in a copy of uncharted, which is I'm itself overpriced still at $60. Whatever. It doesn't affect me in the slightest. If there was to be another blu Ray player with the same media center capabilities as a ps3 for less I'd go with that instead.
But what they're doing here makes all the sense in the world. Obviously this isn't the time for a price cut. You could argue that it's past time, and you'd probably be correct, but since they've gotten this far they're better off making the shallow summer sales more shallow rather than having them dry up completely and then use a price cut to drive deeper sales through the holiday season. That they haven't dropped the price yet points towards the validity of the PS3 Slim rumors (hardly needed since the leaked photos of packaging are already super convincing) since no one in their right mind would buy the current hardware if they heard that a new, better system was around the corner. Though if there actually is no Slim then there is still a great reason not to drop the price yet, as I mentioned previously (and everyone should know) the summer sales are going to be lower than holiday anyway and it's not like dropping the price lowers the cost Sony incurred to produce the existing units.
In any event, if Sony announced a price cut for say August or September today then a month from now you'd be back here triumphantly fanning the flames with non-stop headlines about how the PS3 sold 6 units in July. It's time to stop living in the past, bro. Sony has gotten this far with the $400 price and it makes little sense for them to cut it now and no sense at all to announce a price drop that isn't immediate.
But we can all agree that the 10-year life cycle talk is bullshit. Not about PS3 lasting 10 years (it very well might) or about it eventually being the winner of this generation, which I'd say are not only possible but likely (Wii being neither here nor there in the equation as I would consider them to the side of the console wars completely this time around), but as an excuse for not having cut the price yet.
Tretton stepping up and saying this (douchey) stuff is just to make the public think for a little bit longer that the PS3 Slim isn't coming later this year.
We all pretty much know it's coming, but when he says something frustrating like this, we actually pause for a sec and think "Maybe they WON'T drop the price after all. Maybe they ARE this crazy."
And thus, with a simple press release, they secure a few more summer sales and retain what's left of the surprise of an end of the year price drop.
[cause that's what all the gamers say these days]
Jim, why did you do it? You joined the Sony bashing bandwagon. You should have just left well alone,
Quote Jim "I am officially sick and tired of the "ten year" excuse. It's not ten years from now. It's the year 2009. Shut up and drop the price, raise the price, do anything, so long as it's not spouting more ridiculous horsesh*t."
Yeah, & I'm officially sick of every website the world over reporting the same stupid fecking story every fecking day. The internet would like a PS3 price cut, & I'd like the internet to shut the feck up, but neither of those things are going to happen.
The 360 needs a price cut, especially the Elite, it's not worth the money, it's not good value, where's the Wi-Fi & bluetooth, & web brower, & Blu-Ray drive, controller with built in rechargable battery, etc...IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!!!...& it breaks. Microsoft has got a fecking cheek charging good money for such a badly designed piece of crap. I don't care how good Xbox live is, or how good a games catalogue it's got...the console itself is less reliable than a French car.
If you can't afford a PS3...save up. If you can't be arsed saving up...tough shit, it's your problem for being impatient. Why don't we all start bashing Alienware for charging £2000 for some of their PC's. Oh, I know, it's because it's not Sony.
If Sony dropped the price of the PS3 by £100, & then sold 20 million units in the first year, they'd lose 2 billion pounds on top of what they are already not making on the hardware, & that needs a lot of fecking games sales to make up. They're a business trying to make money, not please every bloody naysayer the world over.
Also, just because the PS3 isn't selling in America doesn't mean it's not selling. Worldwide it's been selling around the same number as the 360 since it came out. The problem is America seems to think it's the centre of the fecking universe & doesn't like not getting it's own way. It's their news that hits the internet every 5 milliseconds so it's interpreted as a worldwide opinion..which it's bloody well not.
The PS3 doesn't need a price cut right now, it's a good deal for what you get, & if you don't want to pay the price, then don't pay the price, but stop moaning about it. The internet needs to move onto something more worthwhile. As an example how about "Microsoft, fix the 360 already!". That's an ongoing story with some value.
@Im OK: I got as far as you saying the the price of the PS2 now (aka, 9 years later) has any relevance on the price of the PS3 now (aka, 3 years later) before I just stopped reading. If you really want to look at it that way, then you're looking at it exactly the way Sony is and I guess you agree with their pricing. They've got six years to lower the price to that kind of level.