14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that 299 dollars is too high a price for Bobby Kotick when it comes to getting a new videogame console. He would like to pay less for one and has told that to the press.
While talking to the Reuters news agency, the Chief Executive Officer of Activision, which is now arguably the biggest videogame publisher in the world, said that “The price on platforms today has still not gotten down to mass-market price points and I think when you're in the economic circumstances that the world has found itself in, there really is a difference between a $199 game system and a $299 game system.”
It seems that his opinions are not at all isolated in the videogame world. Microsoft took 100 dollars off the price point of the Xbox 360 in September 2008 and immediately registered a spike in sales that pushed it over the PlayStation 3 from Sony. There is now a huge pressure on the Japanese creator of home gaming consoles to follow suit and also take 100 dollars off the price of the PlayStation 3. Most analysts say that the price cut will take place somewhere in early April or, at the latest, at the E3 game show.
Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii, the current generation console that has the lowest launch price, is selling best on the big markets and Nintendo is expected to be ready to cut its price if Microsoft or Sony moves its gaming devices in the same price range. So, Kotick might get his wish sooner rather than later.
His hope is that the excess money would go into buying videogames. The problem is that a reduction in the price of gaming consoles, coupled with the current economic recession, might bring into focus the still high price of videogames, which sell for 59.99 or 49.99 dollars for the three leading platforms. And it's pretty sure than Kotick wouldn't like to be called upon to cut the price of his own products.