Convinced - $399 PS3 coming in October

[Nidan]

I disagree, Sony is a business!!!!!

Losing money on a console during the first few years of the lifecycle is a calculated risk, what’s unprecedented here is the amount of money Sony is losing per console.

Sony has the problem that their cost will always be higher than the XBOX360, which will always be priced lower than the PS3 (an advantage of being the first to market and without Blue ray)

The PS3 is not doing badly in sales, yes it is below the xbox360 in terms of sales to date, but the figures indicate that it is tracking around the same as the xbox360 within the same window after launch.

To drop the price to $400USD will just push Microsoft to lower their price to $300USD and will always be the more competitively priced unit. MS would lose less money than Sony.

Simply @ $600 Sony is most likely losing money @ lets say $100/unit (after taking into account price reductions through volume manufacture) that means they would have to sell 5 $60USD games to break even ($20/game guess) so @ 2.5 games/ year they only break even after 2 years.

 

If they reduced the unit to $400 Sony would be losing $300/unit (in the short term). this means they would have to sell 15 $60USD games to break even, which would take 6 years!!!!!. I think this is not practical as within 6 years the next version will be out. (Yes even the PS4...just remember the PS is still been made and sold in some regions). Simply put shareholders want a return on their investment, which cannot happen at $400 over the next 12 months.

Instead of dropping the price, Sony has value added with an extra game, which reduce their losses. For example the $60 game which i estimate has $20 to distribution, $20 to Sony and $20 to the dev. now has $20 less distribution cost because it is now packaged inside the PS3 and the $20 to Sony is not collected, leaving the total cost to Sony being $20. So instead of dropping the price by $100 they add $20 more to the cost of the unit and keep the price @$600.

Cleverly Sony made the 60GB version obsolete and dropped the price by $100 to try and drive the market to buy more units and to stop it stagnating while reducing the bad press, which saw a lot of fan boys rejoice, but now this is short lived, as we are back to $600 with a free game and an 80G drive which cost them nothing more (essentially levered a price reduction from the supplier)

So, the likely hood of a price reduction to $400 is very slim, watch out for a small reduction 20-60USD and another free game or controller like they have in other countries. ( I’m not ruling out the $400 price point, but i am saying economically it is very unlikely)

 

 

My prediction for Christmas -> $550USD with 1 game and 2 controllers with Rumble. (lets wait and see)