Would you pay $299 for a PS3? You may soon be able to, if we’re to believe a certain “veteran” Wedbush Morgan analyst.
Michael Pachter has predicted that the 80GB PS3 will drop to $299 in April, a full $100 less than its current price. This, despite the fact that Sony is losing money left and right.
He also sees the Pro Xbox 360 dropping by $50, to $249.
Sony’s in a tough spot. It can lower the price of the PS3 with the hope that it will encourage folks to go out there and buy the system in such number as to offset the additional hit it would take by dropping the price. (Sony already loses money on every system sold; a price cut, outside of a drop in production costs, would only exacerbate this loss.) If it drops the price and sales don’t respond in kind, it could end up being a costly, and pointless, price drop.
So we’ll see. Remember, Sony’s main motivation here is to return to profitability, not “win” some imaginary “console war” against Microsoft.
Photo: Flickr
If blu ray players start dropping in price which i believe they have, why can’t the PS3, wasnt that the main excuse is that blu ray is expensive so our blu ray console is expensive. No lie price point is what keeps me from the PS3 while the RRoD keeps me from the 360, well that and I have a Windows PC so they get their fair share of money out of me. Then again I’m pretty ignorant in the hardware details of PS3 and 360.
Bluray was part of the reason it was so expensive. Another reason was the investment in the Cell processor, which Sony co-developed with IBM and Toshiba. They want to recoup some of that cost, too.
Speaking as a loyal PS3 owner, I haven’t had any reason to turn my system on since I finish SW: TFU – which was also available for the other systems. I watch movies and tv on it occasionally. But I’m really waiting for the new GoW, or something along those lines, to get me motivated to game again. The new Killzone looks pretty great too, looking forward to that. They’ll need more exclusives to get people buying again, but more importantly, they’ll need the accompanying hype associated with those games.