There's an element of truth to this. I've always been willing to pay a little more than I'm comfortable with for a console, if I felt like the games were worth it. That said, $500-$600 is just stupidly excessive.
Sony: Price Doesn't Make or Break a Platform
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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Looking at this from a very simplified point of view, this either means that:
A: Price really didn't make a diffrence and the wii and 360 were just fundamentally better
or
B: Sony is talking out of their ass......again.
A: Price really didn't make a diffrence and the wii and 360 were just fundamentally better
or
B: Sony is talking out of their ass......again.
Cheap tat sells incredibly well. If there's almost no financial risk, even things that get horrendous reviews get sales, just to see what's happening. Mediocre reviews for something cheap says value to the lay man, and excellent reviews and low cost is Portal. Are you sure he's in the business of sales or is he really just a "veblen good" spokesperson. "Luxury negates price!" ~bathes in raritanium and angels tears~
Price is very important, especially to me and my demographic, students. We undeniably make up a large chunk of your market. We like being able to eat once a day, I know that's a bit extravagant but it's a crutch I have come to rely on, nutrition.
Price is very important, especially to me and my demographic, students. We undeniably make up a large chunk of your market. We like being able to eat once a day, I know that's a bit extravagant but it's a crutch I have come to rely on, nutrition.
..and that's why selling the NGP with a lithium-ion battery, another proprietary memory-stick - along with the usual full range of lacking media and network functions - isn't going to work, Tretton.
..oh, hold on, I'm getting some news on my ear right now. "Tretton is actually excusing a high price-point, regardless of features he has no idea will be included or not". Now this is a shocker, people, I never saw that one coming. Hold the freaking press.
..oh, hold on, I'm getting some news on my ear right now. "Tretton is actually excusing a high price-point, regardless of features he has no idea will be included or not". Now this is a shocker, people, I never saw that one coming. Hold the freaking press.
Sorry Sony, but that's completely wrong. I didn't even buy the PS2 until 2004 because that was when it finally dropped to 150 dollars for the Slim. 300 dollars is the sweet spot for a new launch console, and if you overstep the next one like you did with the PS3's insane launch price, I'll probably buy from Microsoft again.
As for the NGP, if it is only 250 dollars, that would be huge. However, I seriously doubt it will be less than 350, it has way too much gear packed in it.
As for the NGP, if it is only 250 dollars, that would be huge. However, I seriously doubt it will be less than 350, it has way too much gear packed in it.
Wow. Talk about denial. From Sony, saying "People buy for value, not price" is pretty much saying "We're going to charge out the wazoo for this"
I'd like to note that Sony fanboys may be few and far between, what with their other... behaviors being prevalent.Corpse XxX said:
There's a lot of problems with how Sony is engaging the public. The high price point is one problem, the digital downloads are another, and the infrastructure that they use culminates to Sony having a hard time cultivating gamers.
At least with Nintendo, they try to slowly transfer people from one platform to another. When the Game Boy Pocket came out, it eased people to color. Then they ease people to Gameboy Advance ---> DS ---> 3DS. Yes the backwards compatibility helped greatly in assisting people in not feeling bad about upgrading a year afterwards. Here, Sony seems short-sighted in their approach. They are splitting their consumer base and forcing decisions that don't seem necessary.
I don't have faith in Sony's business schemes... They still have yet to put Scott Pilgrim on the PSP so they still don't have me as a customer.
Price certainly can be the deciding factor, especially in a purchase like a game console.
The thing is, unlike phones, people who buy from a new generation of consoles don't know that the next one will do what they expect or want it to. If Apple, say, screws up their antenna so that holding the iPhone "the wrong way" causes it to lose a big hunk of signal, that's unfortunate. But when all is said and done, their customers still have a nifty li'l phone and a whole bunch of apps and GPS and a camera and so on, and most likely with a faster processor and other neat tricks from what the engineers at Apple learned from the last version and hoped to improve on for the next. The bottom line is, it still does at a minimum what people have come to expect from an iPhone.
Conversely, about all the buyers of a new console know is that it will play games. They might know that it connects to the Internet; they might know that it plays Blu-Ray movies. What they don't know is if there will be games on the system worth playing. If the Internet service will work properly, or be easy to use, or have support and a community to make it worth using and worth suffering through any early labor pains. They don't know if a new media format like Blu-Ray will receive the support it needs and become an industry-dominating medium, or if it will fritter out and become the newest BetaMax. No matter how informed a customer might be, they can't predict the future, and the possibility of spending the highest price among the available options to buy what turns out to be an also-ran is a genuine and reasonable fear.
These things can then avalanche. The opening round of new-system purchases sends signals to the developers and publishers of games: is it worth struggling to learn the arcana of the new system? Is the potential payoff worth the time and money that go into generating high-definition content? Should we bother making games exclusive to one system to show off the best of what it's capable of, or should we play it safe and make a game that plays more or less identically on all the systems? Some of the earliest PS3 releases supposedly needed to sell two copies to every PS3 owner in order to make back their production investment.
The same can go for a system's online services: people don't use them because they're convoluted and empty, the company realizes that people aren't using the service and decides that's not where they want to spend their support and R&D dollars, closed circle.
Consumers may "respond to value", but value isn't necessarily evident on launch, and some aspects of that "value" aren't even developed until well into a console's life cycle. Ironically, by overestimating a console's monetary value a company like Sony can make it's real, long-term value diminish, or at least fail to flourish.
The thing is, unlike phones, people who buy from a new generation of consoles don't know that the next one will do what they expect or want it to. If Apple, say, screws up their antenna so that holding the iPhone "the wrong way" causes it to lose a big hunk of signal, that's unfortunate. But when all is said and done, their customers still have a nifty li'l phone and a whole bunch of apps and GPS and a camera and so on, and most likely with a faster processor and other neat tricks from what the engineers at Apple learned from the last version and hoped to improve on for the next. The bottom line is, it still does at a minimum what people have come to expect from an iPhone.
Conversely, about all the buyers of a new console know is that it will play games. They might know that it connects to the Internet; they might know that it plays Blu-Ray movies. What they don't know is if there will be games on the system worth playing. If the Internet service will work properly, or be easy to use, or have support and a community to make it worth using and worth suffering through any early labor pains. They don't know if a new media format like Blu-Ray will receive the support it needs and become an industry-dominating medium, or if it will fritter out and become the newest BetaMax. No matter how informed a customer might be, they can't predict the future, and the possibility of spending the highest price among the available options to buy what turns out to be an also-ran is a genuine and reasonable fear.
These things can then avalanche. The opening round of new-system purchases sends signals to the developers and publishers of games: is it worth struggling to learn the arcana of the new system? Is the potential payoff worth the time and money that go into generating high-definition content? Should we bother making games exclusive to one system to show off the best of what it's capable of, or should we play it safe and make a game that plays more or less identically on all the systems? Some of the earliest PS3 releases supposedly needed to sell two copies to every PS3 owner in order to make back their production investment.
The same can go for a system's online services: people don't use them because they're convoluted and empty, the company realizes that people aren't using the service and decides that's not where they want to spend their support and R&D dollars, closed circle.
Consumers may "respond to value", but value isn't necessarily evident on launch, and some aspects of that "value" aren't even developed until well into a console's life cycle. Ironically, by overestimating a console's monetary value a company like Sony can make it's real, long-term value diminish, or at least fail to flourish.
I'll stick with PC, it's so much cheaper.
I mean, come on, you need a PC anyway, may as well spend $200 on a graphics card. The money saved on games pays for any upgrades you need to do anyway
I mean, come on, you need a PC anyway, may as well spend $200 on a graphics card. The money saved on games pays for any upgrades you need to do anyway
*shrug* well, we're about to see more soc-designs and multicore setups on smaller netbooks now. So that will definitively be an alternative. Better battery-life, more options, etc.TheComfyChair said:
(Besides, anything that doesn't need to log into the PSN before dumping my entire play, PSN store and browse-history to a subcontractor in Africa is a plus.)
It is easy to say price isn't a big deal when your income is over 6 digits a year. With the fair chance that gas is going to reach a new high this year, I think this guy and others are going to be in for a rude wake-up call.
People do like shiny things, but most times the shiny things do get put on the back burner for more immediate necessary things.
People do like shiny things, but most times the shiny things do get put on the back burner for more immediate necessary things.
