$499 PlayStation 3 Confirmed

Gamespot is reporting that the rumoured price drop from earlier this week is a reality. Starting on July 10th, the current 60GB model will sell for $499. Coming to US shores in August is the 80GB version only available in South Korea at the moment, which will retail for $599. They're bundling that unit with Motorstorm, so it's not just another 20 gigs for $100. "The price drop further indicates that, after a slow start, Sony is now aggressively trying to expand its customer base in the US. The move comes none too soon. According to the latest figures from industry-research firm the NPD Group, the PS3 only sold 82,000 units in the US in May, compared to the Xbox 360's 155,000 units and the Wii's 338,000 units." So, is this it? Will this price drop make you buy a PS3, or are you still holding off for the big games this fall?

"aggressively"?

[TheSHAD0W]

Calling a $500 price "aggressive" may not be appropriate, really. Realistic, perhaps; it's still $200 pricier than an HD-DVD player or a basic XBox 360. I'd call it barely reasonable, but not aggressive.

Disdain

[RedElf]

Sony's continual disdain toward customers over the past few years was the guaranteed nail in the coffin for me. My hard earned cash will go to entertainment elsewhere.

A new motorcycle is looking much more tempting, entertaining, and far more invigorating than a PS/3 could ever be.

Sorry Sony it was just too little too late, better luck next time.

Re:Blu-Ray

[wawannem]

As a parent of a child that *really* wants a PS3, I can say that the price has been the biggest barrier. It's hard to justify this sort of expenditure for a twelve-year-old... I sort of feel like he'll grow up like his gaming-geek old man if I give in and buy one. I'm glad to see that they are coming down in price. -W

Re:"aggressively"?

[TheSHAD0W]

Not considering the original price, and not considering they've been staying on shelves in droves.

It won't help

[realmolo]

The PS3 is still too expensive. But the bigger problem is, there just aren't any "must have" games. I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and just for kicks I was looking at the PS3 game selection. There were about, oh, 25 titles or so, and fully HALF of them were crappy movie tie-in games. That's nuts.

The Wii is slightly better off, in that there are at least 3 or 4 really fun games. But in my opinion, it's not worth buying yet either. But the good Wii games are fun, and they are nice and "console-y". Which brings me to the 360-

Well, it has the most games, of course. But am I the only one that finds the 360s selection of games really dull? It seems like there are a lot of FPS and sports games, and not a heck of a lot else. I expect this will be the case with the PS3, also. It's almost like they are trying too hard to cater to the "hardcore" crowd. Lots of "heavy" games, not too much stuff that's simple to pick-up-and-play. Well, I guess the Live! Arcade games are. But all of those games could be done on the Wii, easily. Never mind the emulated games, which I refuse to pay for because I've been playing them for free for almost a decade now via PC emulators.

This may be it!

[JoeCommodore]

I've been debating getting a Game Cube or PlayStation 2, now maybe I'll seriously look at the PS2. :-) Prices are soo much better at the trailing edge.

Doing business in 21-st century

[suv4x4]

"$499 PS3 rumored"

"$499 PS3 denied by Sony CEO"

"Sony rejects $499 PS3"

"Sony Spokesman says $499 a hoax"

"$499 PS3 confirmed"

Re:"aggressively"?

[Osty]

Why wouldn't I want to buy one now that not only supports HD games, but I can also get the advantage of HD movies

If you're looking for something to play games, you have to compare what's available for the system and what will be out in the short term (in the long term, you can wait for another price drop). That's the biggest problem with the PS3 right now -- there's no system seller game that makes any price worth it. If you're buying it as a Blu-Ray player, $500 is competitive to stand-alone Blu-Ray players and may be worthwhile. If you just want generic "HD movies" rather than following certain studios to one of the two formats, the Xbox 360 without HD-DVD is a better deal (online downloads of HD movies, streaming video and media center functionality at a lower price than PS3) or you'd wait until the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray issue sorts itself out.

With bad press on Xbox 360 system reliability right now

A 3 year warranty for ring of death issues is pretty generous. Reliability would not be my biggest concern about buying a 360 right now. If I was in the market for a 360, I'd be wondering whether or not Microsoft will respond to Sony's price drop with a cut of their own. Sony might succeed in making some people wait on 360 purchases to see if there's a price drop coming, but I doubt they'll convert many of those people to PS3.

Sony willing to at least listen a little from it's consumer base about price issues

This feels more like Sony being pressured into a price drop due to poor sales more than anything else. If it was a "listening to the customer" deal, Sony would be shouting it loud all over the place. As it is, there's no mention of the price drop on the official PS3 blog [playstation.com], which would be the first place I'd expect this to show up if it was Sony "listening to customers".

while MS after having their system out for 2 years now almost only was willing to drop their price because a competitor forced their hands (that is if they are even wiling to drop the price).

Why should MS drop their price? They're still priced below the PS3 even with their top offering (the Elite at $480). People are still buying, there's no credible threat from PS3, and there's no way for MS to drop prices into Wii territory. Maybe this Sony price drop will cause enough of a stir to force MS to drop prices as well. Maybe not. At this point, it's pure economics -- if demand at the current price is too low, Microsoft will drop the price. If it's not, they won't. There's nothing "good" or "bad" about it.

I will admit that I briefly considered buying a PS3 with this new price drop, but I've ultimately decided against because $500 is still too much for the available games and I don't care about Blu-Ray yet (I'll wait for a clear winner to emerge). Another $100, bringing the 60GB down to $400, and I'd probably buy it. For now, I'll wait until there's a system seller that I have to have. From here on out, I can only save money by waiting.

Re:Those who fail to learn from economics 101

[freeweed]

And $3000 in 1990 dollars, what a half-decent desktop PC cost back then, is $5169 in 2006 dollars. Except a half-decent PC is 1/10th that price. Could you imagine spending $5000+ on a PC these days? Yet they're faster, have more storage, massive improvements in graphics hardware...

Technology gets CHEAPER. Far out-pacing inflation. The PS3 pricing is a joke when compared to any other modern consumer electronics - then again, game consoles pretty much have been for a while now.

Re:Don't know about you

[iminplaya]

That may be the picture they present to internal revenue to dodge taxes, or to the FTC to avoid monopoly charges, but to me, Sony is Sony. And if Playstation can't say or do much about the DRM issues the others decide on, then that just means they're not so separate after all.

Re:Why should it?

[WasterDave]

Sony really think about what made their PS2 a huge seller.

They did, it had a DVD player in it. Critically the PS2 came out and was cheaper than a DVD player, meaning that guys like me could get approval from the domestic commandant with the words "but you wanted a DVD player, right". So they thought they'd pull the same trick again - make the PS3 cheaper than a standalone BluRay player and you either get a free games console with your BR player, or a free BR player with your games console ... depending on how you look at it.

As far as I can see it, Sony have made two big mistakes with the PS3:

* Nobody wants a BluRay player.
* Nobody wants a PS3 either.

Because both value propositions only make sense if you drop $2k on a new telly at the same time. Furthermore, where the PS2 was a giant leap from the PS1 and where DVD was a giant leap from VHS, the same cannot be said of this new generation. Consequently they're stuffed.

FWIW after the dead 360 debacle it's becoming clear that the only winner from this round is Nintendo. Who'dve thunk it?

Dave

To buy from Sony or not to buy from Sony

[merc]

Sigh. I know I'm going to probably get modded "Flaimbait" for this, but here goes anyway...

It's only been two years since the CD rootkit scandal and already it seems the consumers have either forgotten or forgiven Sony. So please bear with me while I just take a moment to point out that there are probably still holdouts like me out there who *really* meant it when we said we would never buy from Sony ever again.

We now continue with your regularly commercial sheep-like programming existance where electronics are mass-marketed to you as shiny new objects.

Re:"aggressively"?

[hawkbug]

Exactly - the damn thing was too expensive in the first place. They are only now coming back to reality. Not completely, but they are getting there. $100 off is a good start. Get the thing to $350 and I'd start to think about it. $600 was just ridiculous.

Re:"aggressively"?

[cHiphead]

You are rooting for Sony? Betamax? Minidisc? Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo? Sony is the KING of proprietary hardware, I'm glad MS has spanked them a bit on PS3, Sony is the one company that can take a Linux based game console with so much potential and fantastically fuck it up.

Cheers.

Re:Blu-Ray

[ryanw]

I gotta say, the PS3 as a blu-ray player is excellent. I've talked with several retailers, they want this war to end quickly. They're sick of stocking both formats. They say the blu-ray products move a ton more than the HDDVD stuff. They're fairly confident in a bluray victory.

When I had learned that Microsoft was entering into the video game industry I had several predictions, and they've all happened and we as the consumers are the ones who suffer.

Microsoft has enough cash to drown out any compitition. I felt that they'll come out the gate (no pun intended) with easily hackable hardware and piracy will run rampad. They will show attempts to squash piracy so their 3rd party developers won't be "as pissed' when they realize their software is out in the wild without anyone buying it. Microsoft doesn't really care about piracy, they more care about domiance. Once a market is dominated then they no longer have to focus on anything in particular to keep the customer happy.

Back in the day there were lots of exclusive games for specific consoles. Now between Nintendo, XBox and Playstation, nobody wants to choose a side and miss out on potential market sales. So now they make their games so it's most friendly with all platforms. Exclusive titles is really what the consumers should want. When a game goes exclusive they tailor the game to the console it's being written for with all the extra bells and whisles. When they're developing for all consoles, there is lots of console specific programming that gets lost, so in the end, the consumer suffers.

Sure, sony is evil .... So is microsoft. Bluray rules, the next gen PS3 games coming out are amazing! The PS3 is very smooth and looks better than all the other consoles (in my opinion)...

Re:"aggressively"?

[_KiTA_]

Calling a $500 price "aggressive" may not be appropriate, really. Realistic, perhaps; it's still $200 pricier than an HD-DVD player or a basic XBox 360. I'd call it barely reasonable, but not aggressive.

Personally, I'd use the word "desperate" not "aggressive."

It's not really aggression when the entire game retail industry comes to you and says "either you drop the price on these pieces of crap or we will do it for you / or we're taking them off the shelves."

No "large future performance increase"??

[Namarrgon]

Wow, that's the craziest "advantage" I've ever heard anyone cite :-) "PS3 is slow right now because it's hard to program for, but you should buy it anyway because one day hopefully they'll figure it out" - where do I sign?

Here's a thought - why not just wait until when/if they do figure it out, and then buy it? It'll be cheaper too.

Re:Blu-Ray

[lucas teh geek]

so bluray is good? so what? I dont want a hd video player right now, I want a video game console. I have a perfectly good upscaling dvd player that sits there unused because basically everything I watch is kept in digital formats on my home server and then streamed to my TV via HTPC. sure, the upsampled picture doesnt have the definition of bluray, but seeing as it's only being played back on a 26" 720p tv the difference is ignorable. it seems impossible for sony apologists to say why the ps3 is good value for money without resorting to it's wonderful "blue rays", something that most consumers neither need or want.

microsoft may be evil but at least they arent trying to jam their stupid hd format down my throat, and charging me more for the privilege.

Re:Disdain

[LKM]

You're ignoring everything else Sony has done. And don't get me the "Sony is more than one company" argument, it makes no sense.

Re:"aggressively"?

[Lost Engineer]

How is that shady? Anyone who looked at the differences between the models would know this already. If they didn't, then who's fault is that? What's wrong with giving your customers and upgrade path?

You're right

[Fross]

You're right on many counts. The PS3 is certainly:

Blu-ray player
Upscaling DVD player
HDMI out

I'm pretty sure when I want a Blu-ray player, I'll buy a PS3. Right now, I don't, so to me the PS3 is an exceptionally expensive game console, that plays about the same as the Xbox 360, but has fewer decent games. And it looks like the vast majority of people feel this way about it as well - there just isn't the demand for Blu-ray / HDDVD, which is crippling the PS3 sales.

I mean look at this: http://www.vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii&reg1 =All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=X360&reg3=All&weekly =1 [vgchartz.com] the only thing "really rolling" is the steep decline the PS3's sales are taking.

Please mod parent funny

[xtracto]

Sir, your post is really funny, stupid funny.

You start with:
And you did what MS fanboys always do. You assumed someone can play games on the $299 Core.

and after a random anti-Microsoft rant you finish with:
So yes, you can play games on the Xbox 360 Core system for $299, assuming...

So, your rant is completely out of place, if someone wants to play the new Xbox-360 games he just have to pay the $299 + a memory stick which as someone else state is about $20...

Not that I care about the systems being discussed in this flamewar... I am a happy Wii user which only plays each odd weekend

Re:"aggressively"?

[ggKimmieGal]

All of my guy friends wouldn't listen to me when PS3 and the Wii came out last year. I kept saying the Wii would do really well and that the PS3 was doomed to failure. They were all like, "The Wii is okay, but PS3 has this and that and this and that..." I was like, "Look. You're a small portion of the market. Parents are only going to see two numbers. The cheaper Wii and the $600 PS3. Which do you think they are going to buy for a Christmas gift for their younger kids? The Wii. You may have a lot of money, but what about guys in high school. They are working a minimum wage job. $600 for a system just isn't going to be worth it to them. No, I'm sorry, but the PS3 is too expensive, no matter what features it has." And I was right. $500 is still way too much for a system. They really need to get that number under $400 if they want to sell a bunch this Christmas. What they really should do is drop the price to $350 just for Christmas time. Like starting mid October, drop the price really cheap, and then bring it back up after New Years. Then you'll have moms who see that the system is on sale. And come on, what woman doesn't love a good sale.

Re:To buy from Sony or not to buy from Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

From this point on every time someone begins a post with "I'll probably get modded flamebait" for this, I'm going to comply and mod it that way if I have points.

It's just a reverse psychology attempt for sympathy.

Re:Blu-Ray

[poot_rootbeer]

It's hard to justify this sort of expenditure for a twelve-year-old...

A twelve-year-old boy is probably old enough to mow lawns, run errands, etc. to earn his own income.

It shouldn't take him much of that to understand how much money $500 actually is.

There is no lesser evil to choose

[why-is-it]

Sony's arrogance on the whole matter has made me reconsider the XBox 360 as my second machine.

No offense intended, but I don't follow this line of reasoning. It's not like microsoft has ever been a paragon of virtue or humility. They are both self-interested corporations that look out for their own interests at all times, regardless of consequence. In the past, Nintendo has demonstrated similar behaviour. None of them are angels, they are all the basically the same.

I don't have a Wii, PS3 or 360 and I'm not likely to own any of them any time soon. I could afford to buy all three if I wanted, but I what I have today is enough for the forseeable future. I expect that I will get a next-gen console at some point, but my decision will be based on the games. I will get the system that plays the games I want to play.

Sony's behaviour does not alter whether the PS3 is a good gaming system or not. It provides value for the money or it doesn't, and the same goes for the Wii or 360. It's only entertainment and the vendors are equivalently malevolent. So go out and purchase what you want and have fun. There's no need for mental gymnastics to persuade yourself or anyone else that one decision is better than the alternatives.

(However, the fact that a slashdotter would sooner do business with microsoft than Sony is more than a little amusing!)