"Supply expected to be tight" for 40GB PS3

[DKII]

Here's the timeline for the PS3 sku's in the US.

Launch: 20gb and 60gb models at $500 and $600, respectively. There's almost no 20gb supply because Sony loses about $50 more on each one of those that they sell, and as such the 60gb sells a lot more. They then use that as an excuse to discontinue the 20gb model by saying that nobody wants it even though it was sold out everywhere. They start their rhetoric about how the consumer wants there to be only one model so they're going to stick to the one-model system, obviously taking a dig at the 360.

July: Sony tries to spur sales by announcing a price cut on the 60gb of $100, which sounds impressive until you realize that they aren't making any more of them because they're introducing another model that they lose less money on so they're going to discontinue the older one. Reiterate that they learned their lesson with the 20gb and are going to stick with one model for the long-term.

October: Less than 3 months later, Sony brings out yet another new model which is so gimped compared to the higher-end model it's almost like the 360 Core/Premium. At least they drop the price of the 80gb to match their price cut on the 60gb now that it's pretty much out of stock, but they can't really claim any PR credit for it since they already blew it in July. Now after nearly a year of saying they want to stick with one sku 'cause that's what the consumers want, and how BC is the most important thing in the PS3 because they're attacking the 360, they suddenly do an about-face and reverse both of their long-time philosophies just to put out a cheap model for Xmas to try and trick people into buying in. On top of that the 40gb actually still loses more money than the 80gb so they're reportedly going to limit its supply here in the same way that they did with the 20gb so that next spring they can just drop it altogether and maybe drop the 80gb in price and probably introduce yet another model.

Does this sound negative? Sure. But putting out 4 systems and discontiniuing 2 others in less than a year is a dizzying approach and not likely to win over many customers, especially with the aggressive way they're trying to force in customers.

I want to like the PS3 but so far it's still more expensive and has sub-par games when compared to the 360 and Sony is just making a mess of it at every turn. They even admitted that the reason they took out BC isn't to save cost, but to force people to buy PS3 games. Yes, that's right, for the first time BC actually bit them in the ass because people were buying PS3's and then realizing it had no games so they bought a bunch of PS2 games to go with it. The solution is apparently not to make better/more PS3 games -- a limitation caused by the expense of developing for the system which was their design to begin with -- but to restrict the ability to play PS2 games altogether. And if you really think the 80gb is gonna be around forever with its already limited BC you really haven't been paying attention for the past year.

Okay, rant over. ;>