My brother works at a Zavi store in the UK. All the stores are going to close in the next few months if a buyer can't be found. So what this means is that all there stock is being shipped to a few stores that still make monay and maybe bought buy another company. To clear this stock they are taking upto 50% of the rrp of all items, including the PS3. So a new 80gb PS3 is at under £250 with a game. This is over £50 less than the RRP and guess what, they still are not selling. As my brother is also a long standing gamer he has a interest in the gaming world and has done a bit of fact finding and just before woolworths closed they were selling them at £199, and over 50% of the woolworths stock are now sitting in Zavi stores.

I know what some people will say on this site, "I would have one at £199 or £249 ( with a game )" but the UK general public are not saying that, and I think the poor sales of the PS3 are not to do with price but image. I asked my brother a while ago if he could have a look and see what kind of person bought a 360 or PS3. If was quite interesting to here what he said. Most of the PS3 owners where older than the 360 aroundthe 30+ but he did say that one thing really stood out, and this was that when a family came into the shop looking for help on which console to purchase they only wanted to know about the 360 and wii, they ignored the PS3.

I know this is just one shop in the UK and one persons experiences but it doesn't look good for the PS3 as they will not reduce the price by £100 or more, and anything less will not have any difference because we have seen what happens when the price is £199 or £249 - NOTHING. Zavi will close and the best price foe the PS3 will rise back to £289.

Well PS3 dosent really have the look of "Cool",its black,shiny and really hard to use for new comers,people generally turn away from it.

Its like asking someone to use linux or XP,They would choose XP over linux because its easer to use but the smart people would choose linux.

Is there an aversion to more expensive products in the UK now? I imagine people aren't too confident about spending lots of money.

£250 isn't really a price cut... you can get a 40GB PS3 for £239 off of play.com, albeit not with a game, but you can still get the thing for around £250 everywhere if you shop a bit. Now consider that Zavvi were also selling 360's at less then £99.99 and er, there you go.

Once there is a proper nationwide price cut to £200 it'll pick up, but £250 isn't really much of a price cut.

Word of mouth has it that you can get a xbox for 199 and a PS3 for 399. So the general public is mislead into thinking the xbox offers more value for the money. I have talked to a few people that have bought the xbox and they say they had to invest all this extra money and then they assume they would have to do the same with the PS3. Which is not the case. So again, its all about marketing.

Tell them to contact Amazon in the UK, seemes they have no trouble selling them

oh right i will bump this thread when the ps3 drops price and outsells the 360.

Still interesting to know though, but i just find it hard to trust the validity of a thread where someone says

my great uncles aunties brothers sister inlaws nephews best friends grandad's said this

I live in the UK, and I had no idea about this. Same probably applies to many people.

A price cut without it being advertised is almost useless. People need to know there's a new, low price for them to rush out and buy buy buy.

In the Netherlands I saw a girl (around 16) buy a ps3 with singstar and singstar abba for 450 euros

That's an expensive karaoke set

When Sony cut the price, it won't just be in 1 shop and it'll probably be advertised.