Blog FeedCourse Correction? Maybe
By now I’m sure most of the interested parties have heard, but for those of you who haven’t; Evil Avatar is reporting via GameDaily.BIZ that Sony is going to be slashing $100 US from the price of the PlayStation 3. Taking the much maligned price from $600 to a somewhat less absurd $500. No, I don’t want to hear about what a great deal it is for a Blu-Ray Player. I don’t care about Blu-Ray or the format war it and HD-DVD have started.
This was going to be an article questioning the readers as to whether or not the price drop would affect their perceptions of the PS3 and whether or not you were willing to run out and buy one when the price did indeed drop. However, Sony can’t buy, steal, or cajole good publicity these days and promptly denied they had such plans.
Now, the article doesn’t explicitly say there will not be a price cut come the truncated E3 next week. It merely states that the company does not plan to have a price cut by then. Such a plan could theoretically materialize at any time.
In any case, this brief article has turned from “what was to be” to “what should be?” Has anyone gone out and bought a PS3 for $600? What do you think of the experience? For those of you who haven’t yet bought a PS3, would you consider it for $500? If not at that price, what would you be willing to pay for all that CELL Processing glory? What game releases could twist your arm into purchasing the console now? What about in the future?
As for myself the answer to most of those questions is: nothing. The current price is far too much that should be reasonably asked for a video game system, irregardless of the added bells and whistles. Furthermore, $500 is too much to ask for a video game system, even though I was tempted by the Xbox 360 Elite configuration. As to the games: I find nothing available that is compelling in any way, nor do I see that changing in the near future. With the state of console exclusives being far less than exclusive, the only franchise that holds any sway for me is Final Fantasy and it is less than certain I will only find that on the PS3.
No, for me the next-generation console (as opposed to “new” generation) that still holds my interest is the Xbox 360 and even then I haven’t run out to buy one.
8th July | Reply
Since I already have a 360, and I have a brand new PC being built for me as I write this response, it makes 500 dollars a tough sell. So this is like how much would I pay for a 3rd home platform which puts me in really a different situation than most of the regulars here. I think 400 would be very possible for a 3rd box but maybe i could be stretched to pay 500; especially if down the road they were to have a bundle with a game. However if i didn’t have a 360 the PS3 would be really viable as it’s got some pretty big games coming down the pike.
Drake’s Fortune, Lair, Ratchet, Warhawk, possibly Killzone 2 along with multiplatform stuff so we know there is depth there that’s really hot. And for me the fact that Bioware says they’re developing something for every next-gen platform and that for me would really twist the arm so yeah it looks like it’s going to be pretty nice for the next two years.
9th July | Reply
Course Correction? Evil Avatar has the word that the PS3 is indeed dropping $100 and will be retailing for $500.
However, Sony is also set to announce an 80GB version of the PS3 selling for the old price point of $600. Now the article can get back on track a bit: what do you think and does this change anything?
Furthermore, what does the introduction of yet another PS3 model mean to you and the market? Yes, the 20GB version has long since been discontinued, but now that means there are three configurations in peoples’ homes. Though I suppose that doesn’t matter so much since the hard-drives are user upgradeable.
One thing though: a little discussed issue with the PS3 is that most, if not all, of the games require to be installed rather than just stuck in the machine and played. Is there controversy here? No. However, I wonder if the inclusion of a larger hard-drive has to do with recognition that the number of games that can be played on the PS3 in a given period is limited. Sure, you can only actually play one game at a time but with limited storage space you are also limited to how many games you can swap in and out to play.
Anyway, new thoughts?
10th July | Reply
No change here. I look at the PS3 (and the 360 for that matter) no different to a PS2. I already have a PS2 but if I didn’t then I can pick one up for under £100 from Amazon. The current £400 is an awfully big ask for something that, frankly, doesn’t really do anything more. If the price comes down to £150-200 then it becomes tempting but at this sort of silly price it’s not interesting. With luck, if the price comes down it will be because they’ve redesigned the internals such that it both looks better and isn’t so damned huge.
With respect to the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD aspect, I’m having nothing to do with either format until either one of them becomes the high definition standard or, more likely, another format comes along that trumps both without competition (at which point I’d buy that one). I am not prepared to start investing in disks that may become obsolete so I’m going to continue with “plain vanilla” DVDs that have the added advantage of costing close to nothing these days.
13th July | Reply
Well, GameSpot is reporting that the price cut, along with the 80GB version of the PS3, will only be coming to the US and Canada - PAL territories are getting nothing beyond some different packs and colours. As usual I think Sony are freakin’ nuts and stand absolutely no chance of making much of a dent in the market with such an obscenely priced system. There’s a reason why the Wii is outselling the PS3 by at least double - it’s cheap and that’s pretty much all that matters to a lot of people.
15th July | Reply
Probably widely known by now but I’ll mention it anyway - there is no price cut but rather a temporary sale of old stock. In some respects Sony has come to its senses by only releasing a single configuration of the PS3 (multiple configurations or options typically dying a death in console history) but the ballyhoo about a $100 price cut in the US should be ignored since this is only to clear stock of the 60GB model while it is replaced with an 80GB model for the same old price of $599. There does seem to be some confusion about all this since Engadget has received word that the 60GB would be available for the foreseeable future only to later update the story after “foreseeable future” seemed to be defined as the next few months. Perhaps Sony needs some better glasses…