Sony CEO Confirms Limited $499 PS3 Stock

If you were confused about yesterday's stock announcement, you wouldn't be the only one. Thankfully Kaz Harai, SCEI CEO, has clarified the situation: the $499 60GB PlayStation 3 is a limited offering. They'll only be selling it here in the states until their current stock of the system is cleared out, at which point the only SKU remaining in the states will be the $599 80GB + Motorstorm bundle. The catch is that there is probably enough stock in hand for several months of sales at this price; hence the confusion yesterday about a 'fire sale'. Hirai confirmed this to a Norwegian videogame news site, and the video of the interview is available online. For some perspective, Next Generation has a commentary piece on this strange matter. "Now Sony looks as though it's been spinning consumers. The smart thing to have done would have been to come out and say that the 60Gig version is being discounted and discontinued, and that the bells-n-whistles PS3 at $599 is better value than ever. That didn't happen, and what many have seen as a pretty successful E3 for Sony has been marred by confusion over the future of the platform's strategy. So in those meetings next week, Sony will have cause to look back and consider how things might have been done better."

How Things Might have been Done Better

[MankyD]

So in those meetings next week, Sony will have cause to look back and consider how things might have been done better."

Not to be too cruel, but I think that Sony already had several reasons to do this with the PS3.

Stop Saying 'SKU'

[hardburn]

Stop using 'SKU' in news stories and posts. The word has no meaning outside internal retail outlets and distributors. Saying it makes you sound like a marketdroid.

Re:Stop Saying 'SKU'

[log0n]

Agreed.. this has been bugging me (and therefore everyone :) for quite a while. Gives the person using it the whole 'buzzword to compensate' impression.

Re:Great Move by Sony

[_xeno_]

This will spark interest in the 60GB console, and when all the supplies are moved they will cut the price of the 80GB console to $499. I don't see why people are upset about this.

Oh please, you know exactly why people are upset about this. It's become clear you're a Sony astroturfer. You've posted in the other story on this topic and people were pretty clear why there were upset about it.

But to make it clear, it's that "cut the price of the 80GB console" part. There's no proof that's going to happen. People have been clamoring for a PS3 price cut for ages. There's clearly demand for the PS3, but not at the $600 price point. People have been wanting to see a pricecut.

So what Sony has announced is that there's a pricecut, but then they're going to sell a version that has about $20 worth of storage extra and a version that's not as backwards compatible with PS2 and PS games. (That's assuming $1/GB, which is high - it's closer to $0.75/GB.)

So, ultimately, Sony is announcing a new, worse version of the PS3 for the same price. That's why people are upset.

That assumes, of course, you're interested in playing PS2 games on the PS3. At this point in time, with the PS2 game library dwarfing the PS3 game library, it's a fair assumption that people would want to do that. You can also debate how much worse the PS2/PS emulation is, especially since the new emulation is already used to enable upscaling in the existing model.

However, this still comes off as Sony saying that they're selling a new, worse model for the same price, while trying to ditch the old model. Not completely true, but it sure sounds like it.

sounds like Sony's typical problems of late

[Endymion]

You know... a lot of the problems that Sony has had recently are not necessarily the action they took. Discounting this version of the product so you can introduce an improved* version can be a great move. The quote in the summary brings up a good point, though - it's about their PR! They had a chance to make this great PR, or at least "neutral", but they instead choose to confuse everybody with this idiocy.

I think this has been typical of a lot of their boneheaded moves in the last few years; they have some brain-damaged idea they want to accomplish with the PR, and end up totally screwing the entire announcement. Someone needs to fire the entire PR department over there. It's really damaging their reputation in ways way above and beyond their "normal fuck-ups".

(*) - for some definitions of "improved", which is not really relevant to this point

Re:An interesting ploy

[alvinrod]

I think that their best bet would be to sell the currently available 60 GB models at $500 until their supply runs out and then immediately drop the 80 GB model down to $500, or possibly even lower in time for the holidays. Sony has a lot of inventory to move and if they're hoping to meet their sales goals that they set at E3, they really need to drop the price down to about $400.

I can easily see Microsoft releasing a new version of their hardware in time for the holidays and having a firesale of their own on the old models around the holiday season, which would really cut into Sony's sales. Sony is going to look bad selling at $500 when you can get an Xbox 360 at $300.

I honestly think that Sony should slash prices down to at least $400, which would get a lot of consumers to purchase one. This would help to turn things around for them and to catch up to the lead of the Xbox 360, but more importantly it would give Blu-ray a big advantage over HD-DVD and might allow that war to come to an end. I think the short term loses would be worth it in the long term.

Can Sonys Marketing Dept Possbily Do Worse?

[grapeape]

If I was Howard Stringer the first thing I would do is fire the entire marketing staff. So far their advertising and handling of everything related to the PS3 has been bungled. From the crying baby advertisements that were outweirded only by Sega's Dreamcast campaign, the early arrogance in the press, to the latest price cut, its not a price cut debacle there hasnt been one element of their PR that has worked in their favor.

Hold on a second.

[AmericanPegasus]

Hey, I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that this *isn't* the PR departments fault. I imagine that Sony execs do whatever bullheaded nonsense they want (like this fiasco) and then when PR goes, "Whoa, whoa! If you do that you're really going to piss people off!" they just get a cold reply of, "Well, we're going ahead with it. You're PR. You fix it."

And that's why you see Sony PR guys always desperately spouting whatever bullshit they can muster to defend Sony. They know Sony is being ludacris, but their job depends on them somehow spinning Sony's actions in a positive light.

I mean, otherwise, you'd think for like $500 a call, they could call anyone of us and we'd be like, "Ummm... you know Sony, I just really don't think that's a good idea, you know, to screw your fan base like that," and they'd be like, "Oh... really? Ok, cool. I guess we won't do it then. Thanks for the advice."

Re:Can Sonys Marketing Dept Possbily Do Worse?

[rlp]

You left out the "Goat Sacrifice" event to promote "God of War II". And just about every recent public pronouncement of Ken "PS3 is too cheap" Kutaragi.

Re:More info...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Over a quarter of games aren't going to run. Many of the rest are going to have some problems. What are the odds that all your favourite games won't be among them.

When a company sells a product as being backward compatible then it should be backward compatible. For all titles, not just some. I don't care if they acheive that through hardware emulation or software emulation (there's no reason why Sony shouldn't be able to make a 100 percent effective software emulator, they do have unlimited access to all the hardware, source code, etc) but if they make a promise to their end-users then they should stick to it.

In Sony's case, that promise was broken from day one in Europe and South Korea. Units for those markets never had in-built Emotion Engine chips, so not even early adopters in those markets had the chance to buy a totally compatible unit.

Notice how Sony didn't pull that stunt out of the gate in either Japan or the US? Why do you think that might have been? Perhaps because it felt that it couldn't pull that kind of shit in either of those markets? Or perhaps it thought that if European and Korean gamers were crazy enough to pay its inflated prices (£425 in the UK, which is $850!) then it could shaft them further by removing hardware to cut costs.

Now it seems, by stealth (because they sure aren't trumpeting the fact), Sony have done the same in the US. And, somehow, me pointing it out is offensive to you?

I've owned more consoles/gaming PCs than most in my time. I have (or have had) an Atari 2600, a Commodore 128, an Atari ST-FM, an Atari STE, two Sega Megadrives (Genesis to you), two Atari Lynx (one of each model), a PC Engine, a PlayStation, a Dreamcast, and a PlayStation 2. I've also lived with friends that owned other consoles. There are few major console titles that I haven't played.

Yet so far, I've yet to buy either a PS3, an Xbox 360 or a Nintendo Wii. Why? Because, so far, none of them has really engaged me in any way. I'm trying so hard to want to buy another Sony console but Sony itself seems to be coming up with more and more reasons why I shouldn't ever do that.

It's a shame. All Sony had to do to earn my money was to not try to rip me off with a less than compatible unit (why didn't a single European PS3 have hardware emulation) and a price tag that was, even after accounting for taxes, 45 percent more than US gamers were paying for the same system.

Thanks for the fanboi Sony vs Microsoft rant though. The all-caps "SONY"s were a nice touch.

Re:An interesting ploy

[LKM]

BTW: WTF is o great about Motorstorm anyway? I played it in a GameStop, and it basically seemed like a less-fun version of Excite Truck. Kinda sad when one of the biggest games for the PS3 is comparable to one of the lower-rated games on the Wii.

While I personally agree that Motorstorm (at least at first) feels like a slow, boring version of Excite Truck, the two games aren't really comparable. Despite both being arcade offroad racers, they are very different games. Excite Truck is a fast and insane with huge jumps. Large parts of the game are played in the air, and often, you don't control your car as much as trying to constantly do damage control at superhigh speeds.

Motorstorm is much more of a simulation. You have to read the tracks, try to negotiate the dirt and your opponents correctly, take your own vehicle into account when deciding where to go. It's a lot slower and a lot more tactical. I can see why some people prefer Motorstorm over Excite Truck.

They are both awesome games, in my opinion, and both are worth owning.

Re:Sony marketing bungle? Where?

[Babbster]

It's long past time to call Sony's tactics for exactly what they are, from the PS3's beginning to right now: "Bait and switch." First, they released the $500 20GB version in such small quantities that people couldn't find them, then they discontinued them completely. Now, they've managed to convince people that selling a 60GB console at $500 constitutes a "price cut" (kids, if a console is $500/600 at launch and is $500/600 today, there's been no price cut), only to admit that they've discontinued that model, too - with every reason to believe, by the way, that the new 80GB model is costing them significantly less to manufacture than the 60GB model! The PS3's marketing from day one has been a scam, attempting to make consumers pay more for the PS3 than they expected. Bait. And. Switch.