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SamuelRSmith on 01 July 2012
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Jay520 said:
Bristow9091 said:
I think it was a good idea and beneficial to them, I mean sure they're not making as much money per console, but once someone buys a PS3, they're also going to be buying games, maybe more controllers or a Move controller and other peripherals etc. and possibly subscribe to Playstation+. All these possibilities will surely net Sony more than $50 profit from one customer, although on the flipside, they could have bought a PS3 for $50 more and STILL got everything I mentioned, so Sony would still be making $50 more than they are now regardless, however, I think seeing the console at a cheaper price pushes more people to finally take the dive and buy it (Which is what we're seeing with higher sales numbers), so yeah I definitely think they've benefited more from the price cut.


yes, but you have to assume those people will spend an extra $50. With the ps3 being $50 more expensive, you can guarantee that every customer will spend the extra $50. Also, I don't think the price cut really drove sales that much considering ps3 vs 360 sales this year isn't much different than last year.


Well, this is a case of the seen vs the unseen. You might say that the gap is flat, but who's to say that the gap would have been smaller without the price cut?

Honestly, this is an incredibly hard discussion to have. In order to gain an accurate answer, you'd need to perform studies on the purchasing decisions on those who bought the console before and after the price cut, and also to study those people who still decided against buying the console before and after.

There were also millions of other alternatives that Sony could have taken. If Kyne's numbers are right and it's cost Sony $700m, we should consider everything else Sony could have done with that money. Cut the price of software/accessories? Increased funding to advertising campaigns? Spent that money securing exclusive content? We'd need to analyse all of these situations, and what that would have done for Sony's net financials.

Also, Sony is about so much more than Playstation... should they have spent more of that money on R&D for smartphones and TVs? Should they have spent that money rebranding Vaio? And so many other alternatives... any of these could have helped Sony turn to profitability in the long run.

Hell, they could have just done nothing with the money, and used it to improve their numbers.

What I'm getting at, here, is that it's impossible to really know what Sony should have done with that money... in fact, it would probably cost us more money than it cost them to work out what they should have done with it. Normally, the best people to make the decision are the people at Sony themselves - I say normally, because looking at Sony's performance in recent years, it may be the case that they need to change who makes these decisions.