PS3 price wasn't consumer friendly at launch, admits former Sony exec

Tretton, who was appointed CEO and president of the hardware giant’s American arm months before the launch of PS3, said that the difficulty in manufacturing the console resulted in a price that was not as wallet-friendly as consumers would have liked. Even so, Sony still managed to lose a fair bit of cash on the PS3 despite its $599 price tag.

“It was difficult to develop for, it was difficult to manufacture…so at the price it came out at, everybody knew that wasn’t a consumer-friendly price. Amazingly, that was losing a lot of money for Sony, even at that price,” said Tretton.

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http://www.psu.com/news/31260/ps3-price-sony-lost-money-

PS3 launch was a mess. I am not sure about bluray it may have been important for making the tecnology more popular, but cell definitely could have been avoided.

$399 is a sweet spot for home console launch imo. Costs should be managed around that price target.

I wonder if the japanese home console market would be better if ps3 didn´t stumble as it initially did.

The costs of the Cell tech were what really hurt Sony that gen. With a launch price of 599 US Dollars, and the console was still sold at a loss. Not even the utter dominance of the two prior gens couls have helped them, at least finantially.

Lol, "Former Sony exec." Why not just say Jack Trenton? Is there anyone here who doesn't recognize that name?

I see we are still pretending that PS3 didn't launch at $499.99. Not sure why people overlook the 20GB system without memory card readers. It was after all still fully backwards compatable, and far supirior to the 2000 series that was so beloved.

I am not sure what Jack is trying for in this interview. He is answering like a crappy political figure, instead of telling the truth. As someone outside of Sony I would like to hear a much more candid view, and not one that is still trying to tell people what they want to hear.

PS3's early failure was not a Sony problem, it was a consumer problem. People chose wrong, and now we live with the effects of that failure. That is the real story, not popular, but it doesn't get any more true.

-free online
-blue ray
-built in PS2 for full BC for PS1 and PS2 games
-region free
-harddrive
-wifi, rechargble controllers

this was all not consumer friendly?

Plus they had the ability to install a free Linux OS to use it a a full on PC.

Then, on the 60GB model they had CF, SD, and MS readers for people to easily add their pictures and home video to the device.

The OG model also supported Super CD for those that wanted the best audio.

The Blu-ray player recieved support for Jaa and 3D, which non of the $1000+ Blu-ray players around it's time recived.

Finally, now you can also use it as your cable box with PlayStation Vue.

I know, rather than blaming Sony, why don't we instead pin it all on the consumer, that's the best idea yet!.

Or maybe the Cell cost them quite a bit, selling at a loss, pricing too high along with their marketing at the time being rather random. Not to mention that they took out the Linux feature and didn't push that end much at all.

It was expensive no doubt but a very brave move by Sony nonetheless.

I ended up buying 360 first and Ps3 later but man those ps3 first years were rough...

While I was happy to have blu-ray as the format, it maybe wasn't worth it for them at the time. But, yeah, 600 dollars is a steep asking price for a console. Part of PS1 and PS2's appeal was affordability, so they priced themselves out of the game compared to the competition. Especially knowing that the games weren't performing as well in many cases.