Ps3 price cut all but confirmed before xmas .

[Gballzack]

misterd said:

twesterm said:

SpaceJase said:
TBH if he has as much sense as it seems then he won't be throwing good money after bad.

PS3 is already deemed a failure by Sony (Kutaragi Sacked) and I seriously question how much more losses the larger company are prepared to receive on it's behalf.

PS3 will no doubt recieve price drops in-line with reduced manufcturing costs (although these are made harder when you aren't manufacturing much) but I seriously doubt that the profitable side of Sony will be prepared to put their balls on the line for the sake of the PS3.

In short, Sony will not make the PS3 any more of a liability than it already is and any price drop will be in-line with reduced manufacturing costs. Talk of anything more than a $100 price drop (maximum and probably not enough) is fanciful.

 Just because the PS3 isn't doing as well as other consoles doesn't mean it's a failure.  The PS3 is similar to the Gamecub.  The people who had it love it, it had some wonderful games that are very good, and it wasn't a failure.

The problem is that Sony and Nintendo have two very different goals. Nintendo is a gaming company that desires nothing more than to be a gaming company. It can survive and profit quite well with a core group of devoted gamers.

Sony, or more specifically Sony's gaming division, is concerned less with games than with becoming the Imperial Rulers of Living Room Entertainment. It is in a multi-generational competition with Microsoft to achieve this goal. It was ahead, comfortably, and the PS3 was a huge step towards introducing the MegaMultiMedia Entertainment System. Now they have fallen behind MS, and will see a GameCube-like finish this generation as a serious setback towards their goal of Entertainment Domination.

Very true, there was a class of consoles that tried this before known as the "High End A/V Multimedia Consoles" of the 4th and 5th generation. Such Consoles included...

16-bit

- Commodore Amiga CD TV: $650

- Phillips CD-I: $700

32/64-bit

- Pioneer Laseractive CLD-A100: $970

- 3DO Interactive Multiplayer: $700

- Apple/Bandai PipPin: $600

- Panasonic Q Multimedia System: ???

 

The largest difference between these and their modern day cousins is that the Xbox and PlayStation both had strong followings and companies willing to sink subtantial sums of money into them. Will the PS3 be okay, I'm not sure, this holiday season may very well decide whether it will be worth pursuing or not in the eyes of Sony, but that's only my take on it. Many have theorized that their financial standing as a company is far worse than their stock would suggest, but that in itself is for the most part conjecture as well.