$100 Off and PS3 Is Still the Most Expensive Console on the Market
by John Paczkowski
Posted on August 18, 2009 at 12:35 PM PT
The PlayStation 3 price cut is a rumor no longer. Hoping to bolster sales in advance of the holiday shopping season, Sony (SNE) Tuesday announced a new slimmer version of the game console and slashed $100 off its price.
“In 2004, as you may recall, we launched a slim version of PlayStation 2, a defining moment for that console, helping us to really expand the user base of PlayStation 2 further,” Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said at the Gamescom videogame trade show in Cologne, Germany. “Today is that day for PlayStation 3.”
And so, starting Sept. 1, the PS3 will be available for $299. That’s still well above Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, which retails for less than $200 and Nintendo’s Wii, which sells for $250, but it’s a hell of a lot better than $399. And analysts say it will almost certainly spur demand for the console. “People were expecting this to happen. [Sony] had to do something,” MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler told MarketWatch. “This will bring some new customers to the fold.”
Indeed. But how long can Sony sustain such market share gains, when Microsoft and Nintendo are almost certainly mulling price cuts for their platforms as well?
