| johnlucas said: It's confusing the hell out of me, I know that. They're scrambling, man. They're trying to make something happen. Sony INTRODUCED integrated built-in backwards compatibility to the business with the Playstation 2 in 2000. This is why the Game Boy Advance of 2001 plays old Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. This is why DS of 2004/2005 plays old Game Boy Advance games. This is why Wii of 2006 plays old Gamecube games. Sony made built-in backwards compatibility an industry standard, a great one I might add. To see them in this kind of confusion is troubling. Because all these different units will find themselves in other regions eventually. The internet made the world more connected. You can't do this kind of thing. They're cannibalizing their own sales and thinking that hard drive size configurations are the key to boosting sales when it is really lack of popularly compelling game selections and a ridiculous price that keeps people away. By doubling from PS2's $300 US to $600 to the PS3 they stopped most of the transfer of old audience to the new machine. Many people are sticking with their PS2's instead or are picking one of the competition's 7th gen offerings 360 or Wii in lieu of that development. PS2 is cannibalizing PS3 and all these changes only make it worse. It was a bad setup from Get-Go and really there's nothing they can really do to reverse this. I'd say it's best to stick with their guns and stay with original setup they had at launch and just try to get the games in. But that's impossible, isn't it, when hardware bases won't allow for sizable enough software bases. Dang. They're screwed. It's just that simple. But doing all this mess will only screw them quicker. I'd try to slow the pace if I was them. Bundles might be their only option at this point. Not all these spec changes. John Lucas |
In the beginning it wasn't so bad.
You had the 20Gb "lite" verison and the 60Gb full version. Simple right? That's all they needed to run with. No confusion about which was which or what came with what.
However, price jumped in. In marketing there's a phrase called "Price Skimming" which sort of applies to this. You set a high price, clean out all the suckers, and lower it garnering more and more of the market. This allows you to charge the highest price possible to your customers. The problem is that Sony set the price so high there were too few suckers to skim.
Of course, this isn't strictly their fault. The console's manufacturing cost came in too high. Having a console that took so much to build and produce started a chain reaction much like a set of dominos. A high production cost meant a high price which in turn meant fewer sales (Supply<->Demand at a given price).
Sony has literally been left with no options. Lower the price or face declining sales. Since they can't afford the price drop they did the next best thing--reduce functionality to the point where it was more cost effective. It's like throwing good money after bad though. They desperately need to hit the balance where people will buy the functionality they offer at the price they can afford to sell it for.
This 40Gb model seems to be a step in that direction but I'm just wondering how much Backwards Compatibility is worth. To myself and the majority of people I know, it's huge. I've seen several people who were waiting for the price to come down flat out refuse to buy the new version because they want one that can play PS2 games.
