"Sony wants to attack the 360's lack of value and bring up its own rich feature set, but the company continues to to ignore the power of a low price. The good news? A price drop may make the PS3 more competitive, as our own numbers show a real hunger for the system."

Sony didn't have much to celebrate in the July NPD report on video game sales; the company instead sent us a fact-sheet explaining just how great a deal the PS3 continues to be, pointing out all the ways the PlayStation 3 hardware bests the 360 and the Wii in terms of features. 

"When you compare all the features against other industry offerings, there is no doubt that the PlayStation 3 provides the most complete entertainment system on the market today—right out of the box," the company claims.

If a company offers a product with such wide and immediate appeal, it doesn't usually need to bring up the competition; it merely sits back and allows the product to speak for itself. So what's going on here?

Make sure your features are the right ones

The major selling points of the system that Sony lists, including Blu-ray, wireless capabilities, and PSP interaction, may not be what the core gamer is looking for. For Sony to make this argument, gamers have to find value in not having to connect an ethernet cable to the system, for instance. 

Sony compares the 80GB PS3 hardware to the 360 Arcade. The difference in price: $200.

Sony points out that it costs $100 to buy an add-on to make the 360 connect to your wireless network, but in many cases it's a simple thing to connect the system to your wired network. Convincing the consumer that they're "getting" $100 of value out of the feature is a tough sell.

The same goes for the Blu-ray drive. No one is going to argue that the PS3 isn't an incredibly able Blu-ray player—it's one of the best players on the market, and future-proofed against later updates—but if you're not in the market for a Blu-ray player it doesn't add any significant value to the system. For those of us interested in a high-end home theater, it's a great value-add. For others, it may be meaningless.

Sony also points out that its online play is free, but the fact remains that it still hasn't reached feature parity with Xbox Live. The one slam-dunk is the hard drive: Sony gives you roomy drives with the ability to upgrade the hardware yourself, while the Xbox 360 sticks with proprietary, expensive, smaller drives.

We're not trying to downplay how great the PS3 hardware is; these features are real, they're great, and they're useful, but they may not be as important to the average gamer as Sony would like them to be. In many cases, price is the most important factor, and while Blu-ray and wireless may be nice, they're not always enough to convince a parent or grandparent to spend $200 extra dollars in the store. Right now, price is everything, and no checklist will change that.

The secret? Just lower the damn price

We ran a poll in our gaming section asking readers how likely they would be to buy another console in the event of a price drop, and if so, what console they would be interested in. While we usually let the responses cook for a week to gain the maximum number of respondents, it's worth looking at what our readers are saying now: they want a PS3, but they just need the price to come down.

Out of 3,708 respondents as of this writing, 65 percent are looking to buy a PS3... once the price comes down. Only 28 percent of readers are waiting on the price to buy a 360, and only eight percent would buy a Wii after the price comes down. This isn't the most scientific of polls, but it sends a message: there are a large number of technophiles out there who just need the value to be a little better before they pick up a PS3.

It's no secret why: the system is great, and we can make the case for the game library all day long. There is also the fact that the 360 is known for its hardware defects, while the PS3 has so far been rock-solid when it comes to reliability. The list of exclusives coming by the end of 2009 and in 2010 are intimidating, including God of War 3, Heavy Rain, and Uncharted 2. These are games that you'll want to play, and they're only coming to one system. The argument that the system doesn't have enough games to justify the purchase simply holds no water anymore, and it hasn't for a long time.

But Sony needs to stop making the case that the system, as it exists now, is a great value for the price. If the company hasn't convinced gamers yet, reiterating the talking points isn't going to do it. We think that there's a clear hunger out there for the hardware, but buyers need a price drop to compete with systems that have $200 and $250 configurations. 

If the price drop is truly coming, and we hope it is, Sony's future could be bright. It has the hardware, and the games, needed to be competitive. Now it just needs the price.

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