| mrstickball said: They can either cut the price, and cost them billions, to be somewhat viable in the future, or keep the price as-is and pray that the PS4 can regain marketshare. Either way they take a gamble. Cutting the prices to compete renders their business unprofitable, and may prevent them from making a PS4. On the other hand, the PS4 may not even have a market to sell to, since MS and Nintendo will be dominating the marketshares (and Sony would end up with less than 20% by the end of gen). If I were Sony, I'd do the later: Save the cash, and take the beating. Develop the PS4 to be cheap & innovative, and hope to regain some of what made the PS1 eat up the marketshare. |
Look, roughly 9 months ago announced their business plan to sell around 10 mio PS3s this fiscal year. While the resident nutjobs in this forum immediately started to contradict and pulled numbers like 14-18 mio out of their imaginary hats, it seems that somebody inside Sony had a crystal ball as the current selling numbers almost exactly match the business plan. (And before you start to yodel "bbbbut.. Sony lied.... they planned to sell 15 mio units and played lowball" - no, a business plan is a commitment and not a proposition that can be changed without massive cost increases).
Obviously Sony was caught on the wrong foot with the economy meltdown and exchange rate troubles. Instead of achieving cost neutrality on the manufacturing level with its Playstaion line, they are now faced with overall losses on _all_ of their consoles. Unlike MS with the X360, Sony cannot afford the massive losses in manufacturing by ofsetting them with other profitable departments and more massive software revenues.
So to sum up for all the nutjobs hovering in those "Sony is doomed" threads:
a) The PS3 sells exactly as it was foreseen in the business plan.
b) Sony was caught by surprise by MS's price reductions - life is unfair - so be it
c) Sony currently cannot lower _any_ prices of _any_ gadgets they sell without going red as a whole company (notice how they announced unspecified price _increases_ a few weeks ago)
d) There are probably less than 10 people at Sony working on the PS4 (and absolutely none of those people waste any thoughts about "market share" - this is not a fanboy rat race, this is corporate business). At this stage, this project likely is in a "fortune teller" stage, as nobody knows where the road goes in the next five to 10 years, consumer and technology wise.
