Sony denies PS3 price cut rumor - but it’ll still happen
By Dave Parrack
Regular readers will know I’m a big advocate of hardware price cuts - well, aren’t we all? And there’s one home console that is currently in desperate need of a price cut: the PS3. It’s overpriced and underselling. How many more reasons does Sony need?
A couple of days ago, D+Pad published what it claims to have received from an anonymous source in attendance the Sony Computer Entertainment Staff Annual Briefing held in London recently. This source claims that SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) President David Reeves revealed a lot of new information relating to the Playstation 3’s future.
PSN will see more investment, LittleBigPlanet and Motorstorm are on their way to the PSP, and Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, and God of War 3 were all on show. But the biggest bombshell revealed by the source concerns the price of the PS3.
It’s claimed that David Reeves discussed the current economic climate and the Playstation business in that context. He then stated that “SCEE will be getting more competitive in price from March 2009 onwards.”
D+Pad, as well as almost every other gaming site on the Web, has put two and two together and assumed this must mean a PS3 price cut is on the way in time for Easter 2009. This would coincide with the expected release of Killzone 2, probably the most important release on the console since LittleBigPlanet.
Sony was quick to to issue a statement surrounding the leak, saying:
Information discussed within the confines of internal company meetings is confidential and subject to change. We do not have anything to announce at present and we do not comment on rumor and speculation.
But a Sony Computer Entertainment America representative went one further and outright denied the March price cut, telling Edge:
There are no plans for a price reduction on PS3 in March 09, and anything reported on or discussed otherwise is purely rumor or speculation.
Maybe it is rumor and speculation but there is no smoke without fire. And a price cut early next year is hardly in the realms of make-believe now is it. The PS3 is too expensive for mainstream consumers, especially in the current economic climate, and Sony needs to cut the price soon in order to compete with the Wii and Xbox 360, both of which are considerably cheaper than the Playstation 3.
Sony can deny the claims all it wants, but I foresee this price cut happening exactly when it’s rumored to. The big question then is whether the price will only be lowered in Europe or whether the States will follow suit.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
under
Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!
Tips N4G
November 25th, 2008
theres the Playstation 3 Visa credit card… which gets you $150 off of your PS3 purchase…
why didnt you guys include that in the post??
lets see… $400- $150= $250… how weird… all of a sudden… it becomes more affordable…
Dear Sony… WHY DIDNT I GET THIS OFFER A MONTH AGO!!!
I couldve bought 3 more games with that cash… GODDAMMIT!!! offers like these piss me off… thanks a lot… and to the new owners… enjoy assholes…
gonna buy MK and Heavenly sword… good bargain on amazon… add me bourne… get those games… we can play togather…
November 25th, 2008
hahaha . . $150 sony store card . . worth $70 on the street after markup is taken into consideration.
Great . . . MS gives you discount AND 3 year warranty . . Sony gives you a rebate.
Save those UPCs fellas!
November 25th, 2008
umm… I dont think its a Sony store card…
you act like the 3 year warranty is something to be proud about… this is so screwed up… this problem has gotten so bad… that it made a multibillion dollar company extend their warranty… and it encouraged people to open up their “We can fix your problems” and “Fix your own 360″ websites…
sigh…
so far… within the game critics community… I have yet to find someone who isnt having a 360 problem every month or so…
but what do you care… “TEH PS3 SUXORZ”
November 25th, 2008
‘ AND 3 year warranty ‘
Only because they had to after rushing a badly designed device to the market.
@DWH, not sure what you mean by ‘game critics community’ but I for one don’t have any problems with my 360. Runs as smooth as my ps3 and is actually more quiet these days!Who’d have thought that was ever possible
November 25th, 2008
by “game critic community” I mean Podcastle and Invisible Walls… two podcasts… where the hosts have bitched about having broken 360s… and bitch about the PS3…
Face it people… no matter what you say… the grandmas and the housewives have spoken… Wii sells more… financially… it wins… even game quality wise… its good… while it has its crap… the 360 and the PS3 have their crap too… Id buy it for the Mario and Zelda games alone… cus I didnt have gamecube and I could play those games… sigh… only gonna buy it after the 360… one day… then I would be in the same community as CAD and kev… *shudder*
November 26th, 2008
They shouldn’t have even hinted about this rumor until after the holidays, if at all. All it does is hurt potential sales until the rumored price cut.
jsimons_2000. Can you please explain to me how the $150 off the PS3 by using the sony card is only really worth $70 after “markup”. I’m not sure if you’re just talking shit or you know something the rest of us don’t………..
November 26th, 2008
With all of the incredible Black Friday bundles and deals going on at the moment (Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, the credit card), you can get some amazing deals on a PS3. So although the price has not been officially cut, it’s pretty much the same thing.
My guess for a price cut would have been around March ’09 anyway. I would like to know more about the alleged Little Big Planet for PSP.
Sidenote: I am just in awe that people are happy about the 3 year warranty fiasco. The fact that you are almost guarantied that your console will at the very least die once in that timeframe, and that people are happy about having to have it fixed or replaced, just blows my mind. What happens when the console dies at 3 ½ years?
November 26th, 2008
I think the Sony Credit Card is a great Gimic but I also wonder how many lives it will ruin because lets face it. We’re in a financial crisis because we spend to much. It sounds great but I wonder how many lives it will ruin.
November 26th, 2008
It a gimic that the Banks use to get your money then you end up paying more when you don’t make payments and intrest starst to build making your purchase more then what is was suppose to be worth. Had you just saved the money and bought it with cash you’ll be better off and not paying intrest to Sony.
November 26th, 2008
“Sony can deny the claims all it wants, but I foresee this price cut happening exactly when it’s rumored to.” - Sorry davep…you’ve “foreseen” a lot of things regarding the success of the ps3… and NONE of it has come true.
oh well…if at first you don’t succeed…
one can’t forget:
1. bleak global economy
2. grim sony outlook
3. losses taken on the ps3 at current pricing
4. the other consoles will STILL be lower in price than whatever price sony chooses.
oh dave… keep the dream alive…
November 26th, 2008
darkwhitehair - why do you hold ms accountable for doing the right thing and correcting the problem for free while you forget sony had to be sued to help their customers with faulty ps2?
hypocrite much?
November 26th, 2008
whoa… I didnt forget the PS2 disk drive thingy… YOU told me about it… how could I forget… but atleast the PS3s dont have that problem… atleast Im not aware of it… I didnt say the extended warranty was bad… ITS A FUCKING AWESOME DEAL!!!! (you want me to scream it from the top of a building or something??)
Im saying… dont brag about the 3 year warranty… cus the red ring is still a problem…
I think the Sony credit card is a great deal… if you have the money… then it shouldnt be a problem… if youre a retard with 5 credit cards… then you probably shouldnt be buying ANY console…
and you keep bitching about Sony’s losses like its supposed to hurt us or something… Im glad theyre making a loss… Microsoft got crapped on with the Xbox… thats why they are doing so well with the 360… I hope Sony can learn from this and make some better decisions…
November 26th, 2008
@CAD.
Its 0% interest for 12 months. If you cant afford to spend $250 (which you can pay off right away of course) in 12 months, you probably shouldn’t be in the market for purchasing a new system anyway.
You also don’t need to explain the downsides of credit cards. You simply don’t spend what you can’t afford. At no point should you be putting down getting a $150 off a purchase for it when after the fact you can cancel the card or never use it again.
You’d be jackin off all over yourself if MS came (pun intended) out with a similar offer.
@kev. MS had no choice to avoid a class action lawsuit. Still didn’t help since they will be sued anyway. Sony’s hardware failures weren’t close to the abysmal 33% shitbox had.
November 26th, 2008
The PS2’s problem was that the laser had a tendency to get dusty on the older models. If anyone actually took the time, you could have easily opened the console up and used compressed air to clean off the laser. Viola! Problem solved. It was a design flaw that was addressed with the Slim PS2. I would not equate that to the RROD fiasco.
November 26th, 2008
Barnabe,
My dad and I just used a standard DVD cleaning kit on our PS2 when it got dusty. Prolonged its lifespan about an extra year and a half… and my dad lived in a poorly ventilated, poorly insulated shack in the middle of the woods…
-Arvis
November 27th, 2008
Of course they deny a price cut, now is the busiest time of the year with thousands upon thousand frantic parents running around trying to get a hold of the latest piece of technological equipment around. If they had their sights set on the PS3 and news of a price cut looming on the horizon don’t you think they would be persuaded to wait a little longer? Kev, the PS3 will be able to compete with the Xbox 360, since all the extras u have to purchase with the core(being the cheapest) brings it up past that of the arcade which is somewhere in US$300 region which would be where the PS3 is aiming. In addition, funnily enough Microsoft is being hit harder and has and already weaker economy than Sony, hmmm funny how things turn out aye.
November 27th, 2008
I’ve said it before and Ill say it again.
The day I get some kind of rebate for a price cut on a machine I already own is the day I will care.
November 29th, 2008
phranctoast - sony still REFUSES to give any number associated with the ps2’s breaking. suffice it to say, many of the ps2’s being sold today are replacements. they got sued, ms didn’t. all i’m saying is don’t be a hypocrite especially when ms when the extra billion miles
barnabe - check your facts sport. dde and dre. optics were another issue.
LH SWEDE - you forget most people don’t need (or want) the bells in whistles in the ps3..as proven by the poor ps3 sales.