Euro PS3 Price Cut Would "Annoy" Consumers; Christmas Season Not Critical, Says Official

[Junaid Alam]

Euro PS3 Price Cut Would "Annoy" Consumers; Christmas Season Not Critical, Says Official

SCEE president David Reeves asserted that the upcoming Christmas season is not the most decisive sales test for the company and that a European PlayStation 3 price cut would merely annoy consumers.

In an interview with semi-official Sony blog Three Speech, Reeves said, "I think each peak is crucial to maximize what you can do, but I don't think this Christmas is necessarily the most critical one - I think that's going to be Christmas '08.

"I see this more as kind of like a tsunami - it starts small and gathers speed, and eventually, after four or five years, it will start to take you over."

The statement falls in line with previous official Sony statements positing the PlayStation 3 as a long-term platform that will remain viable for a decade.

Nonetheless, an assessment downplaying the importance of the coming holiday season fails to explain why Sony previously overstated the number of titles the PS3 will offer in the coming year.

In response to discontent over the company's decision not to cut the consoles price in Europe despite a $100 drop in the U.S., Reeves also downplayed the importance of July as "not really a gamers' month" and went so far as to say that a price cut right now would irritate consumers.

"So we thought if we reduced the price, we'd annoy a lot of people," he said.

Source: Gamesindustry.biz [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26934]

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[Joe]

Christmas really isn't a big deal, guys.

 

[Bongo Bill]

I am beginning to wonder if Sony's management does not, in fact, include Bizarro Satoru Iwata.

 

[thefreemarket]

PS3 public relations, brought to you by your friends at The Onion.

 

[Arbre]

You Europeans are everybody's *****!

Huh, I'm European.

 

[Andy Chalk]

As much as I hate being a voice in the wilderness, it makes sense to me. The odds of Sony getting their shit together enough to significantly impact the industry this Christmas are very slight, but you can't really expect them to just outright admit that they're giving this one up to Nintendo. The wording is pure spin, but under the circumstances long-term strategizing is really Sony's only option.

 

[Geoffrey42]

The other thing that comes to mind when considering where the price drop is being used, which furthers the evidence that its really just an inventory issue: the only consoles being price-reduced are the ones that still have hardware emulation in them. There's no need to clear inventory in Europe, because the ones being sold there are already the more profitable ones.

While it doesn't seem to make sense to lose even more money on consoles that are costing you more to start with, I will give Sony props for doing a far better job than MS at trying to keep SKUnfusion at a minimum. Rather than letting hardware revisions proliferate like rabbits, they're actively working to make the choice simple. How many 360's will there be when the Halo Edition ships? 4?? Let's not even talk about how many TRUE SKU's there will be once the die-shrink hits, and you've got savvy consumers the world over scrutinizing P/N's on the back of boxes to see if its the good Elite or the bad Elite. There could be up to 8 possible 360's, ACTIVELY being sold. Ugh. Don't worry, I plan on being right there with the P/N scrutinizers, but I feel bad for the chumps who pay the same price for inferior hardware, who may never know the wiser. At least, until the RRoD comes to town...

 

[Arbre]

Well, the PS3 is already there with three main variants, while being particularily younger than the 360, and we guess that in roughly 4-6 years, there's a PSsuri down the pipe.
Where can we get more info about the true 360 skus?