Evidence for Console Price Cuts 150
Next Generation offers up an exhaustive analysis of previous console generation price cuts, and concludes that we are definitely due for some cheaper next-gen action sometime in the near future. The piece includes charts of lowering system prices, as well as a breakdown of how many consoles sold at various price tiers. "Certainly we can use history as a guide, but there are limits to its use for prognostication. The price drops this generation may happen in ways entirely different from what has been suggested above. Maybe the $300 console this generation will be what the $200 console was last generation. Maybe Microsoft will forge ahead with its current price structure until after Halo 3 has come and gone. Maybe Sony will bless the PlayStation 3 with a 33% price drop sometime this year. And maybe Nintendo will give the Wii a small price drop by removing Wii Sports from the package. Those could happen, but don't bet on it."
in all honesty (Score:5, Interesting)
I simply cannot justify, however, spending 600 on a PS3. I don't care if it is a Blu-Ray player, I still cannot justify it.
If the PS3 were 400, I would likely buy one. If there were more than two games I was highly anticipating (God of War 3 and Lair) I would be willing to pay 450.
But 600? No fucking way.
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The PS3 as BluRay player (Score:5, Insightful)
The valid point of view contrary to this is that if you have an HD setup, and are therefore probably considering getting some kind of next-gen player at some point, then the PS3 which is affordable as next-gen players go and is a game console actually looks like a decent deal. This is the standard argument against the PS3 being overpriced (the "you get a lot for the money" argument), and it is a valid viewpoint if it applies to you, but it misses the bigger point:
Basically nobody who is balking at the price of the PS3 gives a shit about the "you get a lot for the money" argument. If you have enough to blow on an HD home theatre then you can easily afford the PS3 and sure maybe it's a good deal. "Good deal" and "affordable" aren't the same, and the fact is the PS3 is not affordable to many people. Just like a 70ft yacht for $100k might be a great deal, you will still find sales of such a yacht limited to the wealthy. Duh. So why people think "you get a free bluray player!" will make people leary of spending $600 on an entertainment device more likely to buy a PS3, I don't know.
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Does the fact that I had $1400 worth of theater equipment mean that $600 is chump change?
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"Not exclusive toys for the insanely rich" is a far, far cry from "mass market".
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Even if it's chump change, it's too much (Score:2)
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Not to mention that DVD
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I justified it simply by saying, the 360 is $400, or $479 with HDMI.. so $499 is not so bad... and $599 is not a huge leap.
Clearly you are not the target demographic...
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Maybe you're right, and sony was just targeting the wealthy hardcore gamers. But if that's the case, it's was a pretty stupid move from a business point of view, and the performance of the PS3 in the market has reflected that. Development of hardware and games costs too damn much for a niche console.
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It would almost be like getting a game for free. A $100 price drop would be like a free game and an extra free wireless controller.
Personally, I think Microsoft should drop the price $50 dollars and include a recharchable battery wi
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Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Armored Core 4, Kameo: Elemenets of Power, Need for Speed: Carbon, Table Tennis (Still one of my favourite on the system, especially multiplayer), Crackdown, Saints Row, Oblivion, GRAW, GRAW 2, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Chromehounds, C&C3, Fight Nigh
All three are overpriced (Score:2)
(I do own a Wii and a PS3, by the way)
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I have a $2700 1080p HDTV. But it only does HDMI at 1080i. If I want 1080p I have to use VGA. So since the PS3 only supports Blu-Ray 1080p over HDMI, its just not an option. Many, many people have HDTVs with no HDMI at all, just DVI or VGA. In contrast, the HD-DVD drive for the XBox will happily output 1080p VGA.
Ironically, in trying to prevent me from copying my Blu-Ray discs, they've forced me to the only solution for viewing, which would, if I wanted, allow me to copy them, namely a PC with decryption s
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600 is insane for the PS3. However, picking them up used (at least where I live) is fairly easy, and knocks a good 200 bucks off the price. I got my PS3 (still in the original packaging, manual not opened) for 44,000 yen (about $390). There are still no games I want to play on the system yet, but I'm enjoying the large number of free demos and playing all my PS2 games in HD.
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From my point of view I have not been overly impressed with most of the games that came out with all the next generation consoles, considering them to be mainly clones with graphical enhancements of ear
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Only the PS3 feels overpriced to me...If the PS3 were 400, I would likely buy one...But 600? No fucking way.
I was one of those people complaining that the PS3 was over-priced until I found myself one day browsing for an upgrade for my 7600GT and seriously debating the viability of an 8800GTX. Now, I couldn't financially justify dropping $600 on a video card at that point, but just the fact that I was even considering purchasing a single component for my gaming rig that cost as much as the entire PS3 system was a sobering moment.
I guess it's ultimately down to perspective. Gaming is my hobby and I don't ha
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Nobody who thinks $500 is a lot for a console cares.
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until the movie cos put out films with real substance and not just the usual commercial "blockbuster" crap ill stick with my looting and pillaging
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He blew ray, and got BD. Who Blew Ray? Everybody loves Ray.
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You know what they say about assuming, Mr. AC...
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Mod up....uh...the AC I suppose? 8D 8D 8D
Evidence?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ryan Fenton
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Moore's Law? (Score:1)
If you look at their price cut per month scale it seems to fit pretty neatly in there with a 50% price cut at the 24 month mark. However there it stabilities, I suppose there are minimum costs involved with logistics and whatnot that prevent further price drops.
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However, transistor density is a factor in both price and processing power.
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A good quote here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Past performance does not necessarily predict future results.
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Since these companies are run by people it is reasonable to speculate on what price cuts will happen in the future based on what they've done in the past.
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But it isn't the same people. Saying that Microsoft will cut their prices because Sony cut their prices around the same time several years back makes little sense.
Yes, all three consoles will reduce their price at some time in the future. How much and when depends on the cost of materials (BluRay, HD, chips, etc.), the current market, and their competition. Not on what happened in the past.
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Not really. It would be better to look at the current sales trends and the cost of materials then trying to overlay graphs.
Sometime (Score:2, Funny)
Wii Sports (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Wii Sports (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan has no Wii Sports bundled with the console (Score:2)
Here is a random week in May.
* DS Lite - 160,009
* Wii - 55,725
Wii Sports seems to sell just fine unbundled (Score:2)
People seem to buy it unbundled just fine. [1up.com]
It's not aimed at hardcore gamers. It's for casual gamers, and it's perfect for them. Easily worth 60 bucks - they probably get more playtime out of it than we get out of most hardcore games.
Non-sensical (Score:1, Insightful)
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Why would they de-bundle a piece of software that costs them nothing to re-produce (bundle) in the first place? Customers are eating it up at the current price point as is.
I guess that's true. It's not like the old days of cartridges where each one was a non-trivial amount of money (the electronics itself inside the cartridge). With dvds (which is what Wii games are printed on) it's literally pennies per game. I wouldn't be surprised if it cost more to print the manual and sleeve than to manufacture & press the DVD itself.
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The Japanese version of the Wii does not include any bundled-in game.
Wii Sports is still the number one selling Wii game in Japan.
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Basic economics say, you keep the price you are at, lowering the price will only low profits as demand is higher than supply already.
What's the news here? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sun will shine tomorrow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why was an article even wrote and why is it on Slashdot?
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Too many maybe's (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe something will happen. Maybe it won't. I can make random conjectures too.
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Nintendo Will Not Drop It North American Wii Selle (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't a good reason for Nintendo to drop Wii Sports from the North American Wii package. Wii Sports is a great hook for selling the system.
At this point, the cost of removing Wii Sports would probably only save a a few dollars or so at most (Disc pressing, manual, and packing). Cutting the system price by $50 wouldn't require pulling Wii Sports to make it feasible. I suppose you could argue that Nintendo could make part of that $50 back by selling Wii Sports as a stand alone game. However, Nintendo would then risk not having a great ratio to new Wii sales and losing the part of the Wii system that makes the whole bundle so easy to pickup with family and friends who have never touched a game system.
Simply put, cutting Wii Sports does not fit with the "Blue Ocean" strategy.
Sports? Never gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps? (Score:3, Funny)
Instead of a price cut, perhaps MS will bundle the systems with more games and maybe a wireless controller or something. The Wii can just give away some free money to buy online games with. The PS3 needs to bundle their console with... a Wii
Cheers!
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Where oh where are the Wii's? (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw one at Wal-mart 2 months ago.. I haven't seen one since.
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http://www.gamestop.com/productavail.asp?miles=50& sku=020070&zip=33607&product_name=nintendo+wii&pla tforms=&sbox=&status=&bn=False [gamestop.com]
Just replace the ZIP code in the URL with your own.
I lucked out and a location near my office was showing 4 units in stock so I called to verify and then picked one up on my way home.
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I check every time we go.. So far I've never seen one at Target.
Hey they have a ton of PS3's though..
I've got iron-clad proof... (Score:4, Funny)
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Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
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If anything, by the rules of supply and demand, Nintendo should have priced the Wii higher. The catch is that the market doesn't like it when prices go up, so it's too late to change that now.
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Anyone who would cut a console's price while in a situation like Nintendo is in would likely be fired before being able to do such a thing. It's been almost eight months since the Wii was launched, and you STILL cannot just walk into a store and pick one up. (I recall being told I was an idiot for reserving one, since enough would be produced and demand low enough that you could walk in on launch day and pick on up.) From the number of peop
Only a 360 price cut makes sense right now (Score:4, Insightful)
The Wii is sold out pretty much as soon as it enters stores. A price INCREASE might may sense, but a price decrease doesn't make sense until you start having demand problems. I don't think they'll increase the price due to public outrage, but the demand is there.
A price cut on the PS3 would bring an immediate price cut on the 360. Comparing a $500 PS3 to a $300 360, the $300 console is going to sell much better. Especially with a better game library right now. Sony should hope and pray that price cuts don't happen for any console until Sony has significantly reduced the manufacturing price.
Microsoft should have cut the price of the 360 in May. The Wii is very quickly gaining ground on the 360 and will catch up soon. The lead over the PS3 may disappear when Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 come out. Microsoft should drop the 360 core (sell them with a hard drive for $249 until there are no more) and focus on a $299 360 premium. Anyone who wants to pay more can buy a $399 Elite. 360 sales are not very good and there is a lot of stock at stores. Pretty much everyone who wanted to buy one at $399 already has one.
Microsoft has non-traditional sources of income for the 360. Live brings in $50 a year per subscriber. Profit from Live is probably at least 30%. Microsoft makes a 30% profit from downloads. If someone is a Live subscriber and buys $50 worth of downloads a year (movies, television shows, Arcade, expansions, downloadable content), that would be $30 a year. Over 4 years, that's $120 profit. With publishers paying Microsoft $8 for every game sold, 20 games over 4 years adds up to $160. Both of those together would be about $280. If Microsoft's cost of manufacturing a 360 is about $300 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20 061120132150.html/ [xbitlabs.com] (the article is dated November 20, 2006 and I'm assuming that it's lower now) and their cost of shipping, assembling and store profit is about $100, their total cost per console would be $400. Once the 65nm chips are out, it will only cut the cost further. You could make an argument for any price between $199 and $299. A $299 price would get them many more sales and would still be a profitable position in the long run. I don't think a price less than $299 is in the planning, but I think it could be justified.
If Microsoft wanted to screw over Sony, they would buy Rockstar and Square Enix. Buying Square Enix is probably the only way they could break into Japan. Make Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy exclusive to the 360. Release it for Windows Vista 6 months later. It would piss the Japanese off, but they would grit their teeth while buying a 360 to get some FF action. Losing Grand Theft Auto would kill the PS3 in North America and Europe, it would probably be enough to take it down worldwide. The Wii will continue to be profitable for Nintendo.
Price (Score:2)
The Wii is busy actually expanding the game market into areas that wouldn't even consider a 360 or PS3 anyway, so it's hard to say what effect that is really having on sales (as in, would the PS3 or 360 really be sell
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Well sure. Cheaters ruin online for everyone. It's not like you don't have to register, and Sony cannot exclude hacked systems...
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Plus wireless, $550. 2nd year, $600. 3rd year, $650.
I buy a console to last longer than two years. I've had my PS2 since launch. Basically I just hate recurring fees, if I used something like Live more often it might be worthwhile but my online gaming is much more spotty.
And if you really want to play the price game, consider that the 360 comes with component cables, and the Elite comes with both component video and a HDMI cable. So that PS3
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Blue Ocean Says No (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, such markets don't really exist, but the Wii IS differentiated. They walked the price cut path with the Gamecube, staying $50 - $100 cheaper than the PS2 and Xbox, and the market share slide that snowballed during the N64 days continued. Pricecuts don't always follow the Econ 101 S-D cur
No need for a 360 price cut (Score:3, Interesting)
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Most certainly not. The NeoGeo never saw a price cut and died a horrible death. The Wii on the other hand started at a price people were comfortable with (I think $250 is going to be this generation's $200 mark - $300 is a little high and will probably be next generation) and has sold phenomenally.
The XBOX360 released at what was roughly equivalent to the PS2 and XBOX release points (with inflation, yada yada). All of those systems showed very similar sales in the first year [vgchartz.com] and then dropped in price
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Yeah, right. Let me quote a little bit of Wikipedia:
"""The Neo Geo's 14-year official span of support from its manufacturer makes it the second longest-lived arcade or home console system ever produced."""
That doesn't exactly sounds like a horrible death. The point to keep in mind is that the NeoGeo was never ever build to bring them market dominance and compete with the SNES, Genesis and friends. It was arcade hardware for y
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The NeoGeo never saw a price cut and died a horrible death.
Maybe you're thinking of the 3DO? The Neo Geo was never supposed to compete with the other home consoles. It was always targeted at rich, high-end gamers, and it was a success at that. If that is Sony's intent, too, they may be succeeding. But it would be the most stupid thing I've ever seen.
Also, stop the inflation argument. Technology does not get more expensive. It gets cheaper. Computers get cheaper all the time. Even other gaming hardware does. For example, despite inflation, the Gameboy line has be
About that chart... (Score:2)
Course, when you do like I did and toss the Wii in there for kicks, you notice it's climbing a lot faster than both.
PS3 with Blueray = winning (Score:2, Insightful)
But to get back to the PS3 minus Blu-Ray - Sony is in this to win it all. Yes it has dampened PS3 sales, but only after a large surge of buying that has established the player in millions of homes. Is it winning against the 360? Not at all right now. But it may pick up a lot of steam later in the console cycle when the larger disc storage
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Several of the big broadcast networks only have a couple shows actually filmed and broadcast in HD, a lot of their content appears to be standard def stuff scaled just like your DVDs. Oddly enough where I live the PBS
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I'm sorry, but you come off as a real elitist prick here. Whether you are or not, you're obviously willing to jump to the conclusion that everyone else is moron if they don't hold to your opinions. For the record, I have a Pioneer Elite 930 with an Onkyo 7.1 system. I'm feeding it Dish Network HD and a Toshiba upconverting DVD player. I realize that it's not the supreme master setup, but I'm
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$950 Dollar hd setup (Score:2)
Plus i have a ten foot vga cable for it so i can make it a secondary demonstration monitor. The resolution/quality difference as long as you are within 6-7 feet is massive.
If you have $2000 dollars you can get an excellent DLP or a 47inch LCD. I don't see how this is not
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DVD took off because it has such huge advantages over VHS (size, chapter skip, bonus features, no rewinding, the ability to search without damaging the media, etc). HD/Blu-Ray brings very little other than better video to the table. Laserdisc is a better picture than DVD. People will continue to believe that HD/Blu-Ray will be critical, but with the price of the discs being much higher tha
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However, the picture quality of HD-DVD is really a very substantial improvement, and for movies makes a big difference. As more equipment comes to the point where this can be appreciated, it will be a big draw.
As for price, volume would reduce price to about where SD-DVD's are today. But real volume will not come until the dumb format war has ended, which the studios are all too aware of... I
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If the PS3 dropped the integrated blueray player (so long as it isn't needed for the actual game discs)
That won't work. The primary expense is the hardware mechanism that reads BD discs (particularly the laser diode), and not only has Sony committed to BD as a game disc format, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they are manufacturing all games (even DVD-sized or CD-sized) games on BD-ROM blanks as part of their home-grown format arrogance. You know, the same one that caused them to also push Beta, MD, ATRAC, and three Memory Stick formats? (plus Memory Stick's "Magic Gate" DRM as a PS2 memory card techn