Hey, i'm usually more pro-Sony, but even i have to say i don't agree with that. At the current price, i would be VERY surprised (and i'm never VERY surprised) if they can sell all their supply in the next 12 months. Heck, they can't sell all their supply now, after just 2 months! At the beginning, i thought the reports about PS3 sitting on shelves were just one-off instances in towns forgotten by god and gamers, but it seems that there are a lot of PS3's sitting on shelves around the US and Japan, even in big cities. That's just not a good sign, as much brand recognition Sony has, it's obviously not enough to make people dish out that much money, especially when there is really not much software worth it at the moment. Though this will change soon.
The time when they will be forced to drop the price - or sales will slows down a lot - will be much closer.
Alternative: new SKU
Drop the harddrive as mandatory (possibly)
Remove HDMI
Remove any other extra ports
Cheaper components/case (such as no solid state capacitors, cheaper cooling design)
And if they're really desperate, find out the max number of SPEs any dev has used so far and start using a cut down Cell and drop the ability of devs to access more SPEs
Ok, this will never happen, but at this point it's almost looking like Sony should start over and release a cheaper PS3-Lite to compete.
Anyhow, I've yet to seen stacks of PS3 anywhere (though I haven't been looking) but every store has had at least a few while having no Wiis. Of course, there may be more PS3s in the back and they just have a few boxes out front for display to show that they're in stock.
But on the Internet, you get these reports of stacks of PS3s sitting unsold for weeks. You also get reports that 7 out of 8 people in some office have Zunes and the eighth guy is planning to get one as well. And they were all iPod owners.
So you're saying it's all just Microsoft viral marketing?
I must say though, if the PS3 doesn't make it into the #1 spot this gen, it will probably be the biggest loss of market share ever, percentage wise and absolutely. Well, Sega did lose quite a significant percentage going from Genesis to Saturn (around 50% to sub 10%), so they may still hold the crown, unless you count old timers like Atari when the entire market was under 10 million.
Game Informer magazine interviewed SCEA’s President and CEO Jack Tretton and one of the topics discussed was PS3’s cost.
The magazine asked if the PS3 would see a price drop schedule similar to PS2, which saw a reduction of a third from $299 to $199 just over a year and a half after launch. Tretton replied to the question with a simple “No,†thus leaving the current price points where they are at for at least the rest of 2007.
Tretton reasoned that the enormous R&D costs of the PS3 make it “a lot more difficult to cost reduce†than the PS2. “There's a heck of a lot more under the hood and it costs us more money to make it,†said Tretton. He may be referring to the fact that Sony is selling every one of its new consoles at a loss, making it nearly impossible to move on the price until manufacturing costs are reduced. Analysts currently estimate that Sony is taking a $241 hit on 60GB versions, and a $307 loss on 20GB PS3s. (
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4981)
1. Corporate execs always say stuff like that, even if the price reduction is tomorrow. They'd rather people buy now than hold off.
2. I doubt Sony is losing money on the PS3s. At this point, with the production lines fairly ramped up, it'd be poor planning of Sony not to be at a break even price point now.
3. Considering PS3 was supposed to be profitable in a year, I don't think they could take losses LARGER THAN THE COST OF THEIR PREVIOUS SYSTEM on the console and pull that off. Even if for some freak reason, the PS2 was sold at a 50% loss, it doesn't mean Sony can afford the same percentage with the PS3. Besides, what was the average game-system tie-in for the ps2? Game costs haven't risen proportionally with the supposed increase in losses, where do they plan to make back the money? I bet Sony loves these "PS3 costs $900 to build!" comments, especially when a PC with:
256MB ram
a 256MB video card (say a 7900GT)
60GB harddrive
dual core cpu (About the same die size as cell)
Doesn't cost anywhere near that price, doesn't have the same economies of scale (the individual parts may but the whole system doesn't) and has to turn a profit.
BTW, forget the ps3, look at ps3 accessories. It's still difficult to find a wiimote, yet every store I go to has piles of six-axis controllers.
