Sony Looks to 'Refine' PS3 Price

Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."

Re:In other news, PS3 to lose more money than befo

[tb()ne]

So they're going to sell it at more of a loss than originally? Especially with games for the thing being expensive to make?

Not necessarily. Production costs are apparently coming down [dailytech.com] so they will only take more of a loss if the price cut is greater than the reduction in production costs.

Re:Games

[Lightwarrior]

It's worse than the PS3 needing just AAA exclusives - there's a general dearth of quality games available. Check out Game Rankings / Metacritic / GameStats / the rating grouper of your choice; the only game above 90% is Oblivion. There are four exclusives in the Top 20: Resistance, Motorstorm, Virtual Fighter 5, and flOw.

And once you get out of the Top 20, the ratings has already dropped below 80%. That's a serious, serious issue.

Re:It Needs "Refined"...

[MikeBabcock]

Yes and no -- there are people not willing to pay anything over say $100 for a pink diamond. They're still worth a lot more. Why? Because /enough/ people are willing to pay that much.

Re:Hope...

[Pluvius]

Certainly Sony knows that the Wii is currently selling because of a combination of price and hype. Hype wasn't mentioned because the question Stringer was asked was about the PS3's price. You'll notice that Sony is trying to combat the hype problem elsewhere, like in their new blog.

BTW, here [ft.com] is a transcript of the interview in question. You'll also notice that Stringer did counterargue the idea that the Wii is selling better because it's more fun.

Rob