SCEE: PSP Go takes advantage of early adopter 'premium'

by Andrew Yoon

Michael Pachter retracted one of the most correct statements he's ever made: the PSP Go is a "rip off" for consumers. The PSP Go takes away the expensive-to-manufacture UMD drive and replaces it with cheap flash memory -- and yet it still costs more than the current PSP-3000. Fun fact: You can buy a standard PSP and 16GB Memory Stick Duo Pro right now for less than a PSP Go.

Sure, the new form factor looks nice, but Sony should have no manufacturing costs to pass down to the consumer. MCV asked SCEE's Andrew House if R&D or retailer markups were the reason behind PSP Go's high price. "Those aren't the factors," House admitted. "When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account."

Essentially, House is admitting you can charge more for technology when it's new. It's unsurprising, but it certainly leaves a bad taste knowing Sony can easily charge less for the PSP Go. Perhaps Sony will follow the iPhone's footsteps and suddenly drop the price of the PSP weeks after early adopters pay their "premium" price.

Its how all electronics work.

Sounds like SCEE confrimed what Pachter said.
Which would make him right.
Which is why he had to retract it.


Mike from Morgantown

@mike
charging a little bit extra to recoup development costs is hardly a "rip-off".

despite that it costs less to make the product now, it still costs money to redesign the product, buy more servers, and other costs associated with starting off an economy of scale from scratch.

Current PSP sells for $170 and a 16 gig M2 memory card sells for $80. If you add those 2 numbers you will get $250 which is what the PSP Go sells for. The fun fact is not correct.

I think the PSP Go is great, but I won't be buying it. I already have a PSP. I am glad that I can take advantage of buying more non-umd based PSP games. If you feel like the PSP Go isn't worth it, you can still buy the PSP 3000.

i afraid if i ever get the psp go il walk it any game shop and see a used game for less then 10euro while its still 40euro on PSN i can see it now resistance is still 40 on PSN and 15euro pre-owned

and also the PSPGo! has Bluetooth added which the psp 3000 does not have...

Sony asking a "little more" than the cost of the PSP 3000 is not anything that any other company has not done in the past..the DSi was more than the current DS with the DSi getting it's GBA port removed yet it had an increase cost also...In my opinion that in of itself is not unlike Nintendo has done with the DS systems, but it seem's to be the "in thing" to burnish ANTI-view's on these companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo WHEN THEY UPDATE THE SYSTEMS.  When they " the one's who are complaining" just as well could wait for the price to drop to get the new system anyway.

Besides it's not like people will not be able to buy the PSP3000 on the shelf also?

yea that's right they still will be able to buy it along with the PSPGo!

I don't care how much they charge the new PSP if that's a way to bring a PS3 price cut.

A 16gb memory stick is $99.99 and a PSP 3000 is $169.99

You people listing prices aren't taking into account, the money it takes to put in the UMD. You're just adding on the price of the memory as if that's the only thing they did. A UMD-less PSP would not cost the same as one with some memory built into it.