| TheSource said: BKK2 I don't think they'd waste the immediate impact of a price cut by putting it so close to Wii Sports Resort, Dragon Quest IX and Monster Hunter 3 which all release within a two month period. I would think September or October or November is more likely as the impacts of those games on consumer spending and boosting hardware sales will be diminished, and Wii sales will likely be back down to 'normal' levels, but if Final Fantasy XIII is to come out in December, they'll want PS3 as cheap as possible to get the most benefit, with word out that the system has become cheaper well known too. |
Well I wasn't really expecting a price cut before Q4, but if the rumoured "PS3 Slim" is true then they may need to do a clearance price cut on existing inventory before they can release the new model, similar to what they did before the release of the 40Gb model (60Gb & 20 Gb models had a ¥5k drop). I'm thinking more of a "pseudo-price cut" (maybe ¥35k?) before the "real price cut" of ¥30k towards the end of the year when the new model (45nm Cell is coming regardless of if a PS3 Slim is) comes onto the market.
We can expect PS3 sales to sharply drop off to very low levels in Japan over the next few months, and we've already seen sales drop to very low levels in US, unless they have very low levels of inventory then they're going to have to do something to shift current models before they can release the next one. I think in this situation a price cut is largely independant of competitor's software releases and more dependant on Sony's own hardware release plans.
Of course this is just speculation on my part, it could simply be a coincidence that there are a lot of PS3 games releasing that week.
