Absolute Gadget

Comment: Sony! Cut the price of the PS3 and cut it soon

Written by Rene Millman Friday, 12 December 2008 16:57

If you look at the latest sales data from NPD, both Nintendo and Microsoft have much to cheer about, but if we were Sony we'd be crying and gnashing teeth in despair.

While the dominates the console market with about 60 per cent of sales with sales more than doubling on last year. In November 2008 it sold 2.04 million Wii consoles compared to 981,000 the previous year. The Xbox 360 managed to flog 836,000 units this November compared to 777,000 the previous year.

But for Sony things look bad. It sold 466,000 units last November but only managed 378,000 this November. It is clearly time that Sony did the decent thing and chopped the price.

But why should it do such a thing? Sony does know there is a recession, it has had to lay off thousands of workers recently so there really is no excuse to ignore the fact that people are tightening their belts and perhaps looking at the cheaper consoles on the market.

The Xbox 360 is around £100 cheaper than the PS3 and it is a next-gen console capable of playing HD movies (when downloaded). £100 is a lot of money at the moment.

OK so the PS3 has a Blu-ray player, but that format has hardly set the world on fire as players are still substantially higher in price than DVD players and the different in quality is no that much morenoticeable for the vast majority of punters out there.

Third, there is a problem with content and gaming. The titles are just not as compelling as on the rival consoles. Little Big Planet is a good attempt at what Xbox did with Master Chief of the Halo series and the legendary Mario for Nintendo. But it would seem that this game is too little, too late.

Lastly, Sony's PlayStation Home isn't quite the same deal as the runaway success of the Xbox Live service - maybe it'll get there but the buzz is simply missing.

What Sony needs to do is make price cuts. Good, solid, no-nonsense reductions across the board. No cashbacks, no having to take out a credit card (which is very difficult in this economic climate). Otherwise, it will stay on the shelf and the developers will concentrate on making great games for ohter platforms.