I'm sure the PS3 will pick up as games come out and price goes down, it's just not something that's going to happen suddenly and quickly.  The PS2 hit $200 in 2007, roughly 2 years after launch.

I keep seeing the comment that it is "Lack of games and too high of a price that is hurting the PS3's sales" and while this is true it has an underlying optimizm which is not really realistic ... The assumption is that as the PS3 gains quality games and as the price drops it will see higher sales; this will probably not happen to the level that these people are expecting.

Face it, the PS3 has had several games (which were good enough to sell a lot of systems) released and sales have continued on their steady decline; even people who love the genre and liked the game series were not willing to buy the PS3 at the $600 price.

Even if you assume that the PS3 will soon be $400 this will probably not provide the boost in sales (long term) that people are expecting. The XBox 360 has had problems selling in most regions and a large portion of that is that at $400 it is much more expensive than most consumers have ever bought a gaming system for; consider the bulk of every console's sales have been at $150 to $200.

I'm certain people will mention the waves of people that are willing to spend $600 for Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy but you have to consider that 75% to 90% of PS2 owners never bought these games and a large portion of those that owned the PS2 version would not buy a system for the game; many games are sold because they are a highly marketed, good game in a popular genre on a platform rather than that people love that particular franchise.

To me, or for that matter, any intelligent shopper that ever researches any of this stuff, seeing a product I want to purchase take a sudden plunge in price of 200 dollars or so in under a year's time doesn't exactly persuade consumer confidence. A good product in the gaming community doesn't plunge downward in chunks, it gradually decreases. If Sony themselves drops the price by $200, sure it makes it more accessible to people, but shareholders and retailers aren't going to enjoy the fact that they bought a product at X price, it's sales have been subpar, and now Sony wants those retailers to take a larger loss on each console sold at that point.

100 dollars will probably be what you see, any more and you might raise some red flags with consumers or investors. Any more than that, and I would think that Sony must be very, very concerned with their future in the market.

naznatips,

I was speaking about exclusivity coming this year,
Not the full list of game released on each system like your link seems to show
but well it is ok, all system have exclusive title, I m sure we aggy.

Well, it looks like the PS3 might be dropping to $500 sooner than we thought:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=169116

I'm not willing to rule out bogus rumor though.

Now to wait for the 360 price drop.

*EDIT*  This looks a bit more official: http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/playstation-3-100-price-cut-hits-july-15-275391.php

Considering that Sony promised to ship 6mil. consoles worldwide by March 2007 and is not even 2/3 of the way there, then I believe that PS3 is selling badly. It failed to meet the expectations of its developers and its sales drop down significantly with each week (10-20% is significant in my book).

I dont think that a price cut is a viable option for the PS3. Sony knows that Microsoft is going to have a price cut on X360 the moment PS3 announces its price cut, thus nullifying the effect of the price cut. Plus, 360 has been out longer than the PS3 and is in a good time to offer a price cut and it will not hurt Microsoft's profits because it had plenty of time to cut production costs. On the other hand Sony didn't have much time to cut production costs and it doesnt have as big of a game library as xbox. On top of that 200$ price cut is needed for PS3 to sell reasonably, but considering that Sony's gaming division has already lost 2 billion dollars(PS3 losses must have been bigger, since Sony must have made some money off of PS3 games, accessories and PS2 games, accessories) I dont think they can afford to have a price cut without pissing off shareholders. Sony's stock has been falling recently and any more losses are not going to be tolerated by shareholders who have absolutely no interest in the playstation brand, only money.

A lot of PS3 supporters believe that several exclusive games are going to push PS3's sales. But I do not think that it is going to do that because people that bought the best games on PS2 accounted for a very small percentage of all owners of the PS2 and 80% of PS2 owners got it after it dropped below 200$. I also dont think that Halo 3 will be a console mover because a vast majority of people that would have bought X360 for Halo 3 already bought 360 for Halo 2.

Last note, Sony has been bashing Wii a lot for alienating core gamers, while it was not core gamers that made PS2 successful but casual gamers. Most of the people I know that have a PS2 ( especially female owners) have PS2 for only a couple of games and play mostly on weekends only. I bought my Wii fully aware that it has no online games yet and "crappy" graphics(i put quotation marks because RE4 and Zelda: TP killed the whole Wii has crappy graphics argument for me, both very beautiful games as far as i am concerned) and I enjoy it very much, I have day when I do not play on the Wii but mainly because I have to let my eyes rest from the pain of playing for 10 hours straight. Dam the burn in my eyes.

What do you think of this?

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/playstation-3-100-price-cut-hits-july-15-275391.php

eather Circut City is slashing prices on the PS3 or Circut City just pissed of Sony

I have seen that link already, and not only this is most likely a Circuit City only discount( and if it CC only then that means they are desperate to get rid of PS3's) and 100$ is not enough for the console to sell. And as I said, it is too early for the price cut, Sony can lose a lot of money and piss off a lot of shareholders (they are pretty angry already) by making a desperate attempt to sell more consoles. If 360 has a price cut then people will say that the system has been out for a while and it is time for a price cut, but if PS3 has a price cut people will say that Sony is getting desperate and is losing a lot of money.

I think if anyone should be nervous it is the 360 folks. They had a year head start and that is all they could muster? They were all alone at the top of the next gen heap and had a ton of really nice games. Wii is breathing down their neck, and it's only a matter of time before the PS3 hits it's stride. I agree that it does not matter who is in first. These guys are in it for the money and if you look at it that way the Wii is winning this war by far. We will know the outcome by Jan 08.