Sorry guys, the last PS3 "price cut" was a real one...

[Final-Fan]

TheBigFatJ said:

Lafiel said:
@ TheBigFatJ )

And what do you think they should have said to not be liars "ohh we'll drop the price of this one in mid october and introduce a new sku in mid november , so plz don't buy consoles now , but rather wait for the price drop" ?? I'm sorry , but Sony actions here were just usual business - if you want to call them "LIARS" for that , then plz don't restrain yourself , but don't expect the other companies to act differently in a similar situation.

In the second part it clearly says "entry-level PS3s" , so I guess they will still offer PS3s with PS2 BC for those who want them ,but not at "entry-level". Your harsh conclusion "it was removed so people wouldn't be able to buy a PS3 and play PS2 games on it" doesn't seem to be quite right there in my opinion.

They could say, 'we have nothing to announce at this time' rather than lying outright. *we* knew there was a price drop coming anyway -- they were just trying to convince others that there wouldn't be. How do you think those customers will feel when Sony said there would be no price drop and then there was one? It's a very short-term strategy to lie like that.

The bolded part of the quote suggests that Sony wanted people buying PS3 games, not PS2 games. Tretton himself said it. He conceded that the cost wasn't reduced significantly -- estimates are about $6 -- less than half the amount of money Sony makes per full price PS3 game sold. They said they're doing it encourage a higher PS3 attach ratio.

Mr. Tretton conceded that removing that capability, along with a few other features, isn't dramatically reducing Sony's cost of manufacturing the console but will instead encourage buyers of the entry-level PlayStation 3 to purchase more games designed specifically for the new system.

Well, that only upgrades it from "incomprehensibly bad idea" to "terrible idea" IMO. I think that it will cause backlash and confusion on par with the "no hard drive" Core. Up to this point the PS3 had not had a SKU with significantly compromised hardware -- going from hardware BC to software was criticized fairly harshly but the quality of the software BC actually proved to be good. There is little upside to this, except for those people who use it as a Blu-ray player.

[edit: on the other hand, PS3 PR is about at rock bottom anyway, so maybe they really have nothing to lose on that score. Might as well do whatever the hell they want, I guess.]