PS3 preorders anyone?

[jjrrs]

well nothing is happening yet, just a week ago I think gamespot had a much more repectable source(some sony head) tell them there is no way a price cut is coming, also after just finallizing the much higher Euro launch prices don't expect anything to happen until if the PS3 fails for a 3rd launch(which may very well happen)

I'm more concerned about the overall outcome of the PS3 at this point more than anything else, sony is not taking out the blue ray player from the PS3 so for everyone who's not wanting to pay over $300 for the system, if somehow within in a 2 years period that becomes the retail price for a PS3, it could only mean the system is completely failing.

Being very high on this system to begin with, it's already sad to see it at this point dispite the fact there is really nothing wrong with it. The PS3 itself works fine, blue ray is what it is, and the system's got a soild set of launch titles especially for those so called die hard PS fans that never got a 360 to play the same ports. The price is high and the games are a bit lacking at this point but everyone knew that was going to happen. if I was asked 3 month ago, I would have bet my life on PS3s still being impossible to get by this time without thinking twice about it, but that's obviously completely off, so whatever action sony is going to take from here on won't suprise me, but for the best out of the PS3 the next few years I'd hope they don't do anything stupid again.
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[Tullaryx]

All the article and the interview it referenced mentioned was that Sony upper management has factored in a price cut in the PS3's future. It doesn't say when or whether it will even been sooner or later. I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo has a business plan for the next 12 months with price cuts factored in. But from a business standpoint Sony is just in a lose-lose situation.

Lose A: They can cut the price of one or both versions of the PS3 within 12 months of the PS3's initial release. This could help Sony stem their loss in market share lead over Microsoft and Nintendo. Good for the company's image, but pretty much reversing Sir Howard Stringer's attempts to turn the company's financial fortunes around. It's been projected that Sony's losses for the first fiscal year which includes the months leading up to the PS3's release and the months after it will be around 1 to 1.6 billion yen. This loss translates to around 500 million USD. That's on the current pricing alone. Now if they drop the price by 50 to 100 per console you can add another 100-150 million loss to that number just. Then factor in negative press from institutional investors (people and businesses who own millions of shares of Sony stocks) and you can have a company whose market value can drop like a stone. It happened to Apple (pre-Steve Jobs second go-around), Sun Microsystem and Yahoo in the last 15 or so years. The companies were pulling in the revenues but the cost of making, marketing and selling their products went over what they were bringing in.

Lose B: Sony can keep the status quo and not cut the price of the console (either version) and hope that the appeal of the Wii tapers off and/or third-party developers begin treating it like the GameCube when their titles fail to sell in massive numbers ( I can see this happening to the Wii). They can also hope that the AAA-titles for the 360 does not move the kind of consoles when released in 2007. I highly doubt that Microsoft will not push packaged deals of 360 consoles with Halo 3 included. I know people who haven't bought a 360 just because theyre waiting for Halo 3 to come out. This tactic of not price-cutting the PS3 will keep the profit loss for Sony to as low a number as possible until manufacturing costs go down, but it will have the effect of Microsoft and Nintendo eating away at more of Sony's market share lead. Again this type of news would be seen as a changing of the guard in the industry once again and Sony might be seen as the loser despite selling more units of PS3 in the long-run.

Gamers only want their games and care not about the business side of things. But it is difficult not to see that Sony is having problems with the PS3 and they have no concrete, or easy way to get out of the hole they created when they decided to make the most expensive console of the past dozen or so years (3DO still takes the cake on that front).
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[Sophita]

For the UK price in dollars, you could almost get a decent computer that you could play a huge amount of games on. If you include the price of a couple games and a couple movies, that's $1,000 dollars!

jjrrs, I don't think there's anything wrong with the console in and of itself. It's just got two issues, but they're two big issues:

1) Price Point. - Yeah, maybe Sony is taking a loss on every console sold, but not enough of one. $600+ is a big barrier to entry, and more people are going to be cautious about dropping half a thousand plus on a console than they are about dropping 200~300. The price just seems ridicucously high at the moment, and though it technically has the best technology of the lot of it's generation's consoles - very few can benefit from it; only, what, 2% of people have 1080p HD? Asking someone to pay a lot for technology they're not going to benefit from is a hard sell at best, and asking someone to buy a new television on top of an expensive console is borderline insane.

2) There's no reason to buy it right now. First generation titles are always pretty weak, generally, but the PS3's launch titles are really, really thin. Resistance: Fall of Man is getting a lot of attention, but first person shooters aren't popular in Japan and are probably the genre with some of the heaviest competition (Xbox 360 has plenty of shooters, and you can play for free online there, and of course there's always the Computer market, too, and if you want bleeding edge graphics, well, PCs will always hold that advantage). And...is there anything else? Developing for the PS3 is cost prohibitive and slow, so I think there'll be a long draught if they don't do something quick. And given that Blueray is an untested format and isn't as big a jump in quality as, say, VHS to DVD, I think people will even wait it out until the winner in the Blue ray DVD/HD-DVD format war is decided.

That said, I think the PS3 could benefit in the long haul if they keep their software library up and get some decent titles and have a price cut. The software will age slower, and as the price cuts a bit if there's a decent library, I think the mainstream market will be more tempted to bite.
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[Tullaryx]

Sophita makes a good point about the price point. I think Sony has forgotten the one major appeal consoles has gotten over PC gaming in the past 6-7 years as console technology and graphics has made massive leaps forward. People buy consoles for gaming more and more because its an idiot-proof machine. No need to calibrate the video card settings. No need to optimize the processor and memory and all that jazz. One just has to plug the machine to one's TV (surround sound system if they're affording it) and load up a game disc.

One could pay 300 dollars for a console and get graphics comparable to a mid-level gaming pc rig. For 600 dollars and higher, the PS3 is starting to encroach on the economical pc rigs that can play games at low to mid-settings. Why spend that much on a console where you still need to buy a 1000-5000 dollar HDTV, not to mention the cables needed (another 30-100 dollars) to fully realize the console's potential. With some knowledge from pc techs one can have a nice gaming rig made from scratch for under 1000 dollars and another 100-200 for a decent resolution monitor.

When one looks at what Sony has done to the PS3 to make it look like a computer as much as possible they could've just developed a new series of VAIO pcs wholly dedicated to video and gaming like Dell and HP has been doing and Alienware and Falcon Northwest has been leaders of in the past 10 years.
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[jjrrs]

[Tullaryx]

For those in the EMEA regions (Europe/Middle East/Australia-NZ) here's some more news to give the gamers in these regions another kick in the crotch.

Playstation 3 loses all Emotion in Europe

This pretty much means that the gamers in these regions will end up paying more for their PS3 than their Japan and North American counterparts and yet won't have everything that these gamers have. I remember how Sony had bashed Microsoft for their own backward-compatability process for the Xbox 360. How it wasn't true full BC since the 360 had to be constantly updated with the patches to emulate Xbox games and not all of them would be made backwards-compatible. The PS3 was suppose to be able to play all 10,000+ PS2 games in its library out of the box. Now it seems that won't be the case for European gamers.
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