Sony PS3 Price Cut - Again

Posted on October 18, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized |

I’ve written so many times that Sony’s PS3 is a bomb and they should just call a do-over that I am actually getting tired of the story. There’s only so much validation I can take:

Sony Corp. is slashing the starting price for PlayStation 3 consoles in the U.S. by $100, its latest attempt to boost slow sales of the machine in time for the holiday season.

The lower price will probably help, but Micrsoft is including 2 really good games with the Xbox360 so the net cost is about $90 lower than the sale price, meaning Sony is still quite a bit more expensive than Microsoft. Also, the fact that the $399 version won’t play PS2 titles could be yet another bad decision on Sony’s part given that the
PS3 titles haven’t really lit up in the marketplace.

Back to the previous posts on this, when I first started writing about this I had people commenting that I was wrong for a number of reasons, including the very good observation that the PS3 is the cheapest Blu-ray DVD player you can get and that alone makes it worth it. I also pointed out that Sony was dragging down their PS3 partners with the failure of the PS3 to take the market by storm and the consequences for the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle between Sony and Toshiba.

Interestingly, when I wrote about it in July no one disagreed about what a disaster this product has been for Sony. The market has decided: Sony’s PS3 is a big loser, the Wii kicks ass, and even with their manufacturing problems the Xbox360 more than delivers the groceries.

So why do I continue to write about it? Aside from my interests in gaming, the PS3 story is a fascinating case study in how market fortunes in markets dominated by few competitors can change, how evolving markets turn traditional strengths into weaknesses (in this case the rise of older games not interested in FPS titles that depend on cutting edge technology), and lastly, how closed ecosystems are impacted.

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