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Is it time for Sony to drop the PS3's price?

08.10.2008
At up to US$470 fully loaded, Sony's PS3 doesn't come cheap, so I'm going to have to agree with analyst Jesse Divinich when the PS3 is getting clobbered by . The PS3 costs around $400 in its base configuration, ascending to upwards of $470 if you tack on an HDMI cable ($20) and Bluetooth headset ($50). The Xbox 360 tends to be slightly to significantly more expensive if you load up its three configurations with most of the PS3's bells and whistles, but its base pricing still seems lower when you scan sticker to sticker.

We tend to think in terms of those stickers, not "total cost of ownership," so cheaply priced, modular technology fares historically better than "one-size-fits-all," even if buying up all the individual widgets costs more in the long run. If the Xbox 360 Arcade is $200 and the PlayStation 3 is $400, those of us without a flag in either camp tend to see "fifty percent cheaper" and rationalize our expenditures in terms of money on the table, otherwise known as "How much do I minimally have to spend to play that?"

Factor in a tumbling investment market, sprawling consumer debt (and nonexistent consumer savings), general mortgage gridlock, and what's going to win hearts and wallets this holiday season probably has more to do with Bottom Line than luxury tech-bling, namely stuff like Blu-ray and 50-inch LCD TVs and digital-download-swollen hard drives. Or if you're thinking more along the lines of "save money, stay home," then you're probably looking to build out your home tech spread in small pieces, one trend at a time.

Don't tell that to Sony. The company's made it pretty clear it plans to hold the line on pricing through 2008. When if Sony would reduce the price of the PlayStation 3 before Christmas, Stringer replied: "I think not."

EEDAR's Divinich predicts September's 360 sales will be up 31 percent weekly, in stark contrast to a 7 percent weekly decline for the PS3. He believes Sony needs to seriously rethink its position on a holiday price cut, especially if September's PS3 sales reveal a monthly total of under 200,000 units, which he says "could be an indication that the Xbox 360 price cut played a bigger role hindering PS3 sales than we originally expected." I agree, and without qualifications.

What's Sony thinking? It's essentially got two games -- and -- in its holiday quiver: The former's a sequel to 2006's bestselling first-person shooter Resistance: Fall of Man, while the latter's an unproven but hugely anticipated casual-angled action-platformer with social networking and customization tools hypothetically genre-bending enough to launch millions of consoles.