14 DAY TRIAL // Sony is a weird company. The PlayStation 3 home gaming console, the spear tip of its gaming platforms, is losing sales when compared with the same period last year and there's no clear communication strategy from the company on which are the aspects that should attract a gamer to its product.
Its chief rival, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, has been on an upward trend from the moment it saw a price cut, in September 2008, while also enjoying a surge as the New Xbox Experience was rolled out in November. Still, the company refuses to say whether it plans to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 or even to acknowledge that it needs one.
Videogame industry analysts are saying that the PlayStation 3 badly needs to see its price go down by around 50 dollars. Mike Hickey, who works for Janco Partners, stated that “If Sony does not cut the price of their console, we expect the continuation of languishing PS3 hardware sales and the potential for publishers to accelerate their reallocation of resources away from the PS3 console. We believe the market is expecting a PS3 price cut in April or by June at the latest.”
The analyst believes that the price cut should be no less than 100 dollars, making the 80 GB hard drive console sell for 300 dollars. Such a move could “effectively restart unit velocity at retail.” The announcement from Sony is said to be made before the middle of March.
According to Hickey, more and more rumors point to Sony preparing a PlayStation 3 version not featuring a Blu-ray. Still, logic dictates that such a move would actually harm Sony, as all the games published for the PlayStation 3 come on Blu-ray disk and the price of the unit is not such a big part of the cost of the PS3.
We'll bring you news on the price cut when and if Sony announces it.