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Sony dismisses rumours of PSP price cut
- Thread starter Vieo
- Start date
Mithos Yggdrasill
Banned
If they say so, it is because a price cut would mean go in the non-profitable area again.
Cosmonaut X
Member
Can they really afford to get into a price-cut battle with Nintendo, though? If they move to slash the price, Nintendo simply go sub-$100. Couple this with the phasing out of the GBA line, major holiday titles & Pokemon imminent...
UncleGuito
Banned
NoBurnst said:
If they confirmed it everyone would wait to buy a PSP until this Xmas
So basically, they're not going to tell you if they're going to drop the price of their product that is currently on the market? Really?
Anyway, if they do somehow drop the price that low, I don't know how that wouldn't be an incredible deal to anyone looking for any kind of entertainment device. For $150 you would be getting a great game machine, great mp3/podcast player, great movie player, portable wireless internet browser, ability to show digital photos, etc.
Yet somehow, I'm sure people will continue to bash it, and want it to fail. :/
Anyway, if they do somehow drop the price that low, I don't know how that wouldn't be an incredible deal to anyone looking for any kind of entertainment device. For $150 you would be getting a great game machine, great mp3/podcast player, great movie player, portable wireless internet browser, ability to show digital photos, etc.
Yet somehow, I'm sure people will continue to bash it, and want it to fail. :/
Larry Bird
Member
Forceatowulf
G***n S**n*bi
And with that they dismiss the high chance of me buying one. 
At the moment there were only two things that could possibly get me to buy a PSP: one of those was a price drop...
DMC... where art thou...?
At the moment there were only two things that could possibly get me to buy a PSP: one of those was a price drop...
DMC... where art thou...?
Shin Johnpv
Member
they REALLY desperately need to cut the price of the damn thing
the fact that the US still has to pay more for a system than Japan did at ****ing launch is bullshit
the fact that the US still has to pay more for a system than Japan did at ****ing launch is bullshit
PjotrStroganov
Member
Shin Johnpv said:
Welcome to the world outside the US.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
maybe they just mean in Europe, obviously. was the analyst talking more specifically abuot a certain region or worldwide?
meltpotato
Member
davepoobond said:
maybe he was talking globally, obviously.
Well, it is a CNN/Money analyst - so he would only be speculating about a price drop in North America. Part of his reasoning is that the PSP has been falling behind the DS (in sales) the past few months, plus the fact that Sony has built up a huge stockpile of PSP inventory. Sony has now shipped more than 20 million PSPs, and have only sold maybe 14 million. That means that there is almost half as many PSPs sold still sitting as stock somewhere. That is a huge backlog of inventory.davepoobond said:
That leaves Sony in a tough spot. They either have to start scaling back or shutting down some of the production facilities - which costs money - or they need to drop the price in order to start clearing out some of the backlog. But dropping the price means that they need to refund that discount to retail. A $50 price drop times 6 million units would be an immediate $300 million dollar hit to Sony - which would be hard to swallow. Although I suspect that many of those 6 million unsold units are actually just sitting in Sony warehouses and are not actually in the retail channel. If that is the case, then the hit to Sony would not be as bad.
It is also possible that this was part of Sony's plan all along. That they wanted to build up a surplus of PSPs before the launch of the PS3. That way they could just shift over some of the PSP production facilities to PS3 production, and there would still be plenty of PSP stock available to carry them through the PS3 launch period. In this case a price cut would be highly unlikely because Sony would be more than happy to use this next year to ramp up PS3 production and just let the PSP inventory slowly trickle down as PSPs continue to sell through the holiday season. Retooling production facilities can be quite expensive though, and having to shift facilities back and forth from PSP to PS3 and back to PSP somewhere down the line doesn't make a lot of sense.
My guess is that Sony expected PSP sales to be quite a bit higher than they actually have been, and they produced the PSP to meet their expectations instead of producing them to meet the actual demand. And now they have built up a glut of inventory which is going to cost them a pretty penny whatever they decide to do. I would expect Sony to try to see if they can ramp up sales this holiday season, and clear out as much of that inventory at full price as they can - that way they can minimize the refunds that they will have to make to retail. But if sales remain sluggish, and the DS continues on at full steam, then pressure will mount to try to keep the platform viable, such as those comments from EA recently.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
but what i'm trying to get at is why is a European country commenting about something that applies to north america by asking a the European branch of the company about a price drop (in Europe, since the branch of the company they're asking is in Europe)?
s'all i mean.
s'all i mean.
Tornado Condor
Member
oh noes! ftw
It's funny, because if Sony doesn't drop the price, Nintendo's momentum will continue and be really strong through Q4, especially if they get Zelda out the door. On the other hand, a Sony price drop to $149 would probably motivate Nintendo to drop the DS price to $99, creating a shitstorm of demand from all corners. Quite the chess match. But I think Sony will drop the price.
I think by 2008 we will be playing a revised PSP hardware system without UMD, but that is just a gut feeling.
I think by 2008 we will be playing a revised PSP hardware system without UMD, but that is just a gut feeling.
It probably wouldn't have any effect on Nintendo's pricing this holiday season. They recently ramped up production to 2.2 million units per month, but they're selling 2 million per month as it is right now, which leaves very little room for them to build up any extra inventory which they will undoubtedly need for the holidays. Nintendo is selling everything they can produce at the moment, so a price drop right now wouldn't make sense, even if Sony did drop the price of the PSP. The fact is, Nintendo couldn't sell any more DS units anyway, so there would be no point in dropping the price.snatches said:
But a PSP price cut would probably guarantee a DS drop to $99 in the spring, and that would probably be the biggest boost to the DS that it could possibly receive. At that price, all of those GBA people start making the switch over to the DS, which already happened long ago in Japan. I'm sure Sony realizes that as well. If the GBA audience migrates to the DS in the US, then even if Sony increases PSP sales with a price cut, they could actually fall even further back in the handheld race. It's an interesting dilemma.
Spring does seem more reasonable to assume, true. I think Sony might ride through this holiday and hope that holiday sales + GTA Vice City Stories will clear out the backed up inventory situation. I am in distribution so I can agree that the write down for Sony would be hella expen$ive.
A Link to the Past
Banned
Oh, this rep is wrong.
Just like when the Nintendo UK rep said that there was no DS upgrade coming.
Just like when the Nintendo UK rep said that there was no DS upgrade coming.
Kurosaki Ichigo
Member
They won't announce a PSP price drop in Europe (those dates and rumor announcements are for that Leipzig convention).Elios83 said:
PS2 is still 149, they are NOT going to put PSP at the same price. I rather expect PS2 to go to 129...if at all.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
snatches said:
So how would people with UMD games play them?
sugarhigh4242
Banned
$149 almost seems too cheap. DS Lite is selling for $129. I know DSL is a very popular system, but the hardware in the PSP is way more than a $20 difference.
Tyrone Slothrop
Banned
no plans to reduce the price? riiiiiiiiiiiight
Kurosaki Ichigo said:
Just to be precise the announcements just before Games Convention are not rumors,Sony has sent official PR to european gaming press (they also confirmed in the same PR no playable PS3 at GC because developers are making demos with TGS in mind).
As for the price it's not a matter of PS2 vs PSP but which platform needs a price cut.PSP after a year on the market does and PS2 doesn't,but we'll see.
Amir0x said:
Imo we all know it will be like this:
59$/ for all Sony published games.
Open price for third parties= 60-70$/