Sony needs to start making some money. There won't be another price cut before holiday's this year at the earliest.

With Microsoft there are three schools of thought. They could afford to cut right now, thereby bringing the price right down ahead of the MASSIVE software blitz of the next three months. Alternatively, they could let the software sell consoles (granted, several less) and reap some extra profits for a few months, THEN cut the price in the April to September period when software releases slow. Finally, they could wait until September with Halo: Reach, assuming Sony don't kick their ass all year, have a very profitable 2009/10 financial year, and perhaps just cut early this year in Europe.

i think the earliest pricecut from Sony will be in the end of spring beginning of the winter but only 50$...

I don't see neither having a price cut at all. Sony and Microsoft will probably rely on their motion controllers and bundles, maybe new colors. Also, there's a lot of software coming this year and Sony have the 3D stuff (although I'm not expecting to be big this year). So I really don't see a price cut for both, much less Nintendo.

I doubt Sony can cut the price at any point this year. The 360 on the other hand will probably get one around September, or around the sametime Natal releases to give a double sales boost to both.

Summer? No. Fall? Perhaps. Pachter should quit his job, has he gotten a single thing right at all this gen?

Well it depends if both are willing to sacrifice this generation early haha. I definitely expect some SKU changes but right now if we see another round of pricedrops (360 followed by PS3 and eventual Wii) then this generation will be sacrificed by 2011. For MS and Sony this would be really bad if they ever had any intention of making some form of profits off the system.

Now I'm not saying it won't happen, but if we see another string of pricedrops in 2010 you can almost certainly believe that the 7th generation will end very soon. Definitely wouldn't work with Sony's 10 year cycle and MS who is launching Natal in 2010 would definitely be suggesting that another console is going to have it as well in 2011.

Maybe Pachter realizes this and is trying to suggest this generation will be about a short as the last but it definitely wouldn't fit models stated by all 3.


Personally I DO think that MS will drop the price of the 360 slightly and that Sony, Nintendo, and MS will all have some form of a different SKU during 2010. But if the big 3 get into a price war in 2010 like what happened in 2009 then you can expect N6, PS4, and Xbox 3 all very very soon.

Yeah I think we'll have virtual price cuts this year. MS will bundle Natal with all 360's but the price won't change. Sony will (or rather needs to) bundle a PS Eye and at least one wand with every new PS3 sold, and not change the price. MS may also re-introduce some of the peripherals they took out of the Elite at the time they eliminated the Pro.

More hardware for the same money = "price cut".

MS may have the profit margin to bundle Natal and drop the price slightly ($25). But doing so might put the 360 back into negative territory, or sit at break even. Ditching some hardware content in the Natal in favour of using 360 processing capacity will make Natal cheaper than the original concept, without substantiallly affecting performance.

Sony doesn't need to drop the price in Japan in response to the 360 strategy, their Japan strategy is around competing with Wii.

If Sony wants to continue pulling ahead of 360 in Others markets and stay in touch with 360 in USA it will need some sort of pricing response if 360 does drop in price. These days in the big markets at least PS3 really needs to be the same price, or only slightly above 360 Elite, but not so much above the Elite that it makes people take a second look at the 360 because of the price difference. If the Elite drops to 250 Euros/dollars the PS3 reallly should drop to 275 Euros/dollars at least. There's no point in the PS3 responding to movements in Arcade pricing. If Sony split theuir focus between about sales relative to 360 and are achieving and maintaining per unit profits then they should ignore 360 pricing.

If Sony are really focussed on per-unit profits and not at all worried about 360 sales then they won't bundle PS Eye or wand and leave it solely as a bundled perihperal with Wand games (like PSEye was bundled with Eyepet and will probably have GT5 bundles too), and sold as a separate peripheral.

I'm 50/50 whether 360 will get an absolute price cut, I'm more certain that PS3 won't.

what utter rubbish

no way is PS3 dropping its price then

360 might, but they'll wait for NATAL imo

PS3 needs a price cut, atleast in the U.S

its still falling behind

@leo-j

no it doesn't

US is finished for PS3, it was a year ago in terms of gaining on 360

nothing SONY can do will ever make PS3 outsell 360 there on a regular basis, its just as simple as that

PS3's sales in the US right now are very very good

another price cut would be silly, its selling the cheapest in the US right now = more losses for them