Despite of many rumours regarding possible price-cut on PlayStation 3 in April, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has not done that so far and it is highly unlikely that the company will do that in the rest of the month. In an interview, a highly-ranking executive from the company said that in order to become profitable, Sony would not only retain the current PS3 pricing, but would also not introduce any special bundles to attract consumers.
“At Sony Corp. the message was ‘Let’s try to eke out a profit’, which took certain cards out of our deck. We’re not going to make a price move for PS3; we’re not going to be packing five free games into a promotional strategy,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, in an interview with Gamasutra web-site.
Profits always please investors, but in the current economic environment and the fact that the PlayStation 3 is still the worst selling video game system in this generation should be considered rather seriously, as if game developers lose hope for the platform, eventually there will be fewer games for PS3 and the number of units sold will drop again.
For Sony there is another challenge: the company wants its PlayStation 3 to have ten years lifespan, like the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. In order to make that true, the company has to ensure that there are a lot of games out there for the platform.
In the console world it is common to lose money on hardware and earn them on the software, but the PlayStation 3 is very expensive to make – around $450 – even now and the company does not want to lose too much on hardware. However, without building a large customer base, the long-term future of the platform will hardly be bright.
Sony PlayStation 3 costs $399 in the U.S.
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