Stringer talks PlayStation 3 strategic price cuts

Friday 15th June 2007, 01:01:00 PM, written by Farid

In the wake of the continuing streak of underperforming sales, in the US and in Japan, and average sales in the EU, of its PlayStation 3, Sony once again went on record to talk price strategy. This time the talk came from the top and in a pretty clear-sighted manner. Talking with the Financial Times, last week, Howard Stringer chairman and C.E.O. of Sony Corp quite candidly addressed the price issue existing with the latest SCEI product.

Even though analysts expect the game division of Sony corp. SCEI to publish a loss close to half a billion dollar, Stringer made clear that there was no question in his mind that the PS3 high price wasn’t received favourably at all by consumers -sales being the testament to this truth- and to correct this, a price cut was in study at the moment at Sony’s HQ.
Stringer wants to “refine” the price of the machine, a term that leads us to expect a price cut in the range of 100-to-150 dollars maximum, which will help a bit alleviate the entry price for the product, but it will not take it much closer to the legendary $199 price point where sales of popular consoles usually soar.

It will also be worthy to note that while the PS3 was released in both 20GB and 60GB versions in the US and in Japan, only the 60GB version is now carried in the US and EU stores, therefore it’s still unclear at this point whether Sony will (re)release this cheaper 20GB version when the price cut hits. As of now, the 60GB model goes for €/$599, while the 20GB one went on sale for $499. The latter would make a $100 price cut much more appealing to consumers.

In this same interview, Stringer commended rival Nintendo’s business model as a very good one, just as he commented that he sees the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 as “complementary and supplementary” more than rival.

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