SCEE boss says Christmas ’08 will be the vital battleground, and that UK is unique market
In an interview with Steve Boxer on semi-official Sony blog Three Speech, SCEE president David Reeves has said that the fact that PS3 arrived later in Europe than other global territories means that it’s still too early to consider cutting the price of the machine.
“We’ve only been on the market for three and a bit months,” Reeves explained. “Our thought process was ‘wait a minute, we’re actually not doing too badly – we’re not selling as well as Wii or DS – but seasonality-wise, compared to, say, PS2 at the same time we launched it in 2001, we’re actually doing quite well on a regional level’.
“July is not really a gamers’ month unless you get a big, big title. So we thought if we reduced the price, we’d annoy a lot of people. We did think about it, but we also felt that it wasn’t doing that badly. In the US, they’ve been going for more than six months, so they took the decision that going down in price was a better thing to do than a value pack.”
Reeves also went on to explain that he sees the UK as a unique market, which leads to more intensive price wars.
“In the UK, there’s intense competition. The situation in the UK is unique – it is so competitive. People are going to come out at £399 with a game, to get people into the store to buy another game and another game. That’s the name of the game.
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“In France, for example, you can’t do that because there’s a law on price-control. In Germany, they hold the prices – you can even go onto Amazon.de and they won’t pull the prices down or put offers in. Even in Russia, they’re not discounting. I do think that the UK is a unique situation and you’re going to see all sorts of deals.”
He finished by insisting that this Q4 will not make or break the global fortunes of PS3 – instead hinting that the real battleground will be Q4 ’08.
“I think each peak is crucial to maximise what you can do, but I don’t think this Christmas is necessarily the most critical one – I think that’s going to be Christmas 08. I see this more as kind of like a tsunami – it starts small and gathers speed, and eventually, after four or five years, it will start to take you over. At least, that’s the way we’ve mapped it out.”
Comments
Hmmm...
I can't believe this is still going on... Sony's execs have lost all credibility over E3 with the complete misinformation over price cuts and I still don't believe them now.
I'm almost certain given a short run at retail, sony will realise that the starter pack does not offer the value they seem to think it does and we will see a cut priced solus console around october.
until then, we'll just have to endure more sony exec gaffs...
Re: Hmmm...
There is one major thing that alot are forgettng in this:
Micosoft has been selling the 360 at a loss since launch and will probably cut the price around christmas, just to saturate the market.
I don't plan to get a 360 anytime soon but this is very pertinent when one looks at Sony's statement of stating they cut the price to what they could afford to sell them at. To be honest, they could have just as easily recalled all the US models, removed the emotion engine parts, and made PS2s out of them and then sent them back at a cut price.
Another major issue here is that they are no longer utilizing toshiba for the emotion engine parts, hence cutting alot of overhead on thier part, so the inclusion of only an 80G HDD, emulation in the place of an emotion engine, and then keeping it at the same price as launch, only phasing out the 60G models with this paltry $100 price cut, is actually an insult, not only to those that purchased and actually kept thier systems at launch (not the eBay con artist....) but also potential customers.
The best thing they could do is just provide a 20G HDD, sell the non-emotion engined emulation equipped model at maybe $400, and then those that wish to upgrade HDD can always order one from newegg, tiger direct, or even those sites that have even specialized in 120G to 160G HDDs with the PS3 OS already installed.
Of course that's just my opinion......
Re: Hmmm...
Not only in the UK is the PS3 expensive, in comparision to the rest of the world its a damn rip-off, and now another Sony Exec tells us we are actully getting a verygood deal, give us a frekking break.
And by the time Xmas 08 arrives the PS3 will be so far behind a pricecut will be the least of its problems, as all gamers know its about the game GAMES GAMES, and unless Sony can pull something out the bag it will find itself a long way behind the 360, and the Wii is a piece of pish.
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