Sony reportedly announced earlier this week it would cut the price of its PlayStation Portable game device 15%, in a move analysts viewed as part of the consumer electronic giant’s strategy to battle Microsoft (News - Alert) and Nintendo in the high-stakes video game market. But Sony might also consider moving fast to cut the price of its PlayStation 3 as well.
Wire service reports this week show a mixed picture for Sony PlayStation 3 sales so far. The Afterdawn.com site reported that PlayStation 3 game sales caused a major spike in retail sales in Australia, while Techwhack.com reported slow sales of the game in the U.K. But PlayStation 3 sales still lag behind that of competitive games—several reports stated that Nintendo’s Wi is outselling PS3 2 to 1 in Japan.
PlayStation 3 was launched in Japan last November—eight months after it was originally slated to debut. Production problems and a shortage of key components contributed to the delay, and forced Sony to delay introduction of the game in Europe until March 2007.
The delays gave Microsoft months of the game market to itself in selling its Xbox, and gave Sony only a few weeks of marketing advantage over Wii, which debuted last December.
The long delays did not necessarily result in getting out the bugs, either. Shortly after PS3 was released in Japan, reports surfaced that the game console was not fully compatible with some games developed for earlier PlayStation versions.
The kicker, though has to be price. Nintendo’s Wii sells in the U.S. for $250, which is roughly half the price of a low-end PS2 with a meager 20-Gbyte hard drive, which could explain why Wii is outselling PS3.
Sony does bundle in a Blu-ray Disc drive into the PS3 rather than a proprietary optical drive like Wii. But so far, that does not seem to upped the appeal of PS3, which some industry observers have deemed as being too expensive.
Sony has apparently taken heed by deciding to use a Cell microchip—a computing chip that contributes to the game’s high-speed graphics performance—with a less costly 65-nm circuit process instead of the 90-nm process in initial versions of the game.
While that move should reduce the costs of producing PlayStation 3, the bottom line will be what the game will cost on retail shelves. So far, Sony has not said it would cut the costs of PlayStation 3.
In a business where the customer is king and vote with the wallet, it remains to be seen whether it is a matter of too little, too late for Sony in the next-generation video game market.
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Spencer Chin is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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