Are last gen going to get price cuts?

[Shifty Geezer]

Looking at PS3 prices, it's still relatively high at £170 in UK for the 12 GB. That's like 9 years after release. PS2 dropped from $300 to $150 in four years, and hit $99 after 9 years.

Have Sony and MS just given up on last gen and aren't going to bother with a super-cheap option? Was that because of poor design options limiting price reduction potential?

 

[AlNom]

Guess that speaks to how much those things cost them, eh?

 

[upnorthsox]

Sony has already come down significantly from where they started and MS has shown little willingness to lose further on their already massive HW losses. On top of that, theirs less opportunities for further savings last gen than others before it. This gen is even worse as neither is in control of their chip production so its all contract buying.

 

[Rikimaru]

PS3 costs a lot. Sony built a factory to produce Cell. RDRAM license and low production quantities, nVidia being nVidia. 2 chips.

As for MS - they are not interested. I tried to find 360 on mediamarkt website in different eu markets and could not. PS3 is there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So, will we ever have $99 consoles again (or $150 factoring in inflation)? I guess looking at the PC GPU space, old tech becomes very affordable (offloading old stock?) which suggests a simple APU model and standard RAM will mean commodity pricing eventually. With the possibility of shorter update cycles, maybe a $99 entry level, $250-300 midrange and $400-500 latest model. Or is that bottom end impossible, in which case will there be a market for $99 Android 'consoles' to serve that market?

 

[Grall]

PS2 dropped from $300 to $150 in four years, and hit $99 after 9 years.

PS2 had room for cost-cutting; its southbridge (which ran audio processor, I/O and PS1 emulation) got replaced, GS+EE main chips consolidated into one (world's first APU; w00t! ) and so forth, but PS3 does not have that ability. Nvidia owns the GPU IP, which means we'll never see a single-chip/"APU" PS3, and furthermore, Cell uses XDR memory, which probably is costing them a fair bit unless Sony is sitting on a warehouse of the stuff that they purchased years ago when the chips were still relevant and supply decent... *shrug*

Anyway, cheap PS3s are readily available 2nd hand - yeah, a bit dusty, crummy and fingerprinted, but they'll run games for a couple years longer, no doubt!

 

[Rangers]

$99 consoles have been a myth for many years, decades?...probably what PS1 was the last gen to hit that? Time and inflation marches on...

Yet somehow people still seem to think it's a thing. Old habits die hard I guess. People probably still talk about the "all important $200 mass market price point" regarding consoles lol.

Edit: I'm pretty sure PS2 never hit 99. 129 at best IIRC.

 

[bunge]

$99 consoles have been a myth for many years, decades?...probably what PS1 was the last gen to hit that? Time and inflation marches on...

Yet somehow people still seem to think it's a thing. Old habits die hard I guess. People probably still talk about the "all important $200 mass market price point" regarding consoles lol.

Edit: I'm pretty sure PS2 never hit 99. 129 at best IIRC.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Edit: I'm pretty sure PS2 never hit 99. 129 at best IIRC.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/31/playstation-2-now-99/

But $99 is beside the point and I acknowledge that inflation may stop that happening. We're not even at $150 though. 12 GB gimp'd PS3 is $200 on Amazon, and seemingly not in stock in other stores like Target and Walmart. 250 GB is $250 for a 9 year old console! When you can get a PS4 for $350, or an XB1 for $300, the value just isn't there in PS3.

It's just bizarre, that after the longest conosle cycle we also have the most expensive at EOL.

 

[RobertR1]

Keeping the prices higher for the last gen and shrinking the gap transitions people faster to the newer gen. As games and gamers have become more online centric the previous model of selling the old gen doesn't really work when you might not be able to replicate those services on the previous generation platform.