PS3's Price Announced

[Sanchez]

Sir Howard said the PS3 will sell for $300 to $400 and will come with a bundle of games, movies, and TV shows, many of which Sony also makes. The question is whether the titles will be bundled on Blu-ray DVD discs or on a built-in hard drive.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/21/technology/playstation_fortune_112805/

Good move on Sony's part. Providing they can shift enough software.

[Domstercool]

If that is the case then it is a tad cheaper than I thought it would be. I guess they are expecting lots of sales of software or something.

[kav82]

Hmmm, interesting.

[Pit-Jr]

I particularly like the bit about Sony jacking up the price of a stand-alone Blu-Ray player to $1000 to make the PS3 seem like a steal. Very crafty.....my hats off to your marketing team.

[CVD]

Heavy-Loss-Per-Console-Me-Do

[CooInTheZoo]

Looks like i WILL be getting a PS3 then. Well, probably.

[DiemetriX]

gr8 news :) cheap consoles for everyone :)

[Schpickles]

Heavy-Loss-Per-Console-Me-Do

As with DVD on the PS2 though, it'll be spread across the corporation as a whole, as they'll be happy to take a bit of a hit to ensure a large consumer base for Blu-Ray.

I'm sure MS will be able to respond with a 360 price cut, and the Revolution will be cheaper still... should be interesting.

For me, it's not got as much to do with price as with branding. Nintendo and MS have to create a brand, with a quality gaming-related draw to it, before Sony can get PS3 out of the door. Whilst neither of them are "the new dreamcast", I think the way Sony completely outmanouvred Sega shows how MS and Nintendo will effectively get one shot at this... if either of them can drive a wedge into the market before PS3 can get a foothold, they'll have a chance of giving Sony a hard time.

I like to think of the N64 to SNES gap - the all-powerful SNES (on the back of the all-powerful NES) created a generation of people that referred to their home games console as "their Nintendo". However, with a protracted launch, an insistance on sticking to their own media and a difficult architecture, the N64 struggled when compared to the PSOne, which offered a new image, and something that games players hadn't seen before (as well as offering an attractive package to non games players, over time).

You could draw parallels with the situation Sony find themselves in with the PS3 - if Nintendo or MS can offer something new that catches on to a mix of gamers and non-gamers, they could be in business. Sony aren't going to collapse, but it's feasible that they might not dominate this time around. Nintendo can offer a new take on gaming with the revolution at a good price, whilst the foothold MS developed with the Xbox, combined with its good momentumn gives them a platform to develop the 360 as a brand if they can market their product as effectively as Sony can.

Still very interesting times :)

[Haver]

So that's like £325 for us then?

[Schpickles]

Heavy-Loss-Per-Console-Me-Do

As with DVD on the PS2 though, it'll be spread across the corporation as a whole, as they'll be happy to take a bit of a hit to ensure a large consumer base for Blu-Ray.

I'm sure MS will be able to respond with a 360 price cut, and the Revolution will be cheaper still... should be interesting.

For me, it's not got as much to do with price as with branding. Nintendo and MS have to create a brand, with a quality gaming-related draw to it, before Sony can get PS3 out of the door. Whilst neither of them are "the new dreamcast", I think the way Sony completely outmanouvred Sega shows how MS and Nintendo will effectively get one shot at this... if either of them can drive a wedge into the market before PS3 can get a foothold, they'll have a chance of giving Sony a hard time.

I like to think of the N64 to SNES gap - the all-powerful SNES (on the back of the all-powerful NES) created a generation of people that referred to their home games console as "their Nintendo". However, with a protracted launch, an insistance on sticking to their own media and a difficult architecture, the N64 struggled when compared to the PSOne, which offered a new image, and something that games players hadn't seen before (as well as offering an attractive package to non games players, over time).

You could draw parallels with the situation Sony find themselves in with the PS3 - if Nintendo or MS can offer something new that catches on to a mix of gamers and non-gamers, they could be in business. Sony aren't going to collapse, but it's feasible that they might not dominate this time around. Nintendo can offer a new take on gaming with the revolution at a good price, whilst the foothold MS developed with the Xbox, combined with its good momentumn gives them a platform to develop the 360 as a brand if they can market their product as effectively as Sony can.

Still very interesting times :)

[rokhed00]

I don't think they can afford it to be honest, what with Sonys other divisions not doing too well Playstation is their main moneymaker. Their only hope is to make money on software, and with no actual games shown so far it's looking doubtful for any major sellers at launch.

[Android18a]

Awesome. I'd pay that. Final Fantasy XIV here I come!

[Hellfire]

If the price is that "low", great news for users. Of course that now Sony has to sell A LOT of PS3 to actually make some profit and they really need it. Still, people are suckers for Sony. But don't you think it's weird that Kutaragi said that it would be really expensive and then it's the same as 360 give or take? Anyway, it still is a lot of money, I think that past 250$ it's stupid.

[rokhed00]

Sony has to sell A LOT of PS3 to actually make some profit
Probably more than they can make before their launch window.

[Hellfire]

Probably more than they can make before their launch window.
Exactly, it seems that they're cornering themselves. They really need to make money, yet, instead of going towards a more profitable strategy with an affordable console that people would buy anyway, because it's called Playstation, they make a uber-powerful machine that probably isnt as great as they say and either a) they sell it for a lot of money, decreasing sales, but having profit per console or b) sell it cheaper, which guarantees more sales, but still no money.

[pedrocasilva]

How much does a Cell cost?

More than Sony would like

By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday 19 November 2005, 15:02

SO, HOW MUCH DOES a Cell cost? Other than the fact that you can't buy one right now, and the Playstation 3 is about a year out, it does cost money to make. From what we understand, each wafer run through the fab costs $9-10K, and IBM gets about 65 good chips per wafer. A quick look at the wafer shown at MPF shows that if these numbers are true, yields are not all that hot.
http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/Cell_face.jpg

This would put each raw Cell on sale at a price tag of almost $150 give or take a bit. Toss in $25-30 for the packaging, and you are at a non-trivial number for a console. Assuming $175 for a 'solder to the board' working Cell, and you are at about half the cost of the console with just the CPU. Add in the GPU, RAM and a HD, and you are in loss-leader territory.

Hopefully yields will go up before the PS3 launches, there are about 200 good sites on the wafer, 2 per 'square', so there is room for IBM to knock $100 or so off the cost. Either way, it looks like IBM and Sony have a long uphill climb for the next console.Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27809
I highly doubt that price is possible on-launch without cutting anything in the specs, unless they are in position of loosing a lot of money this generation... And accordingly the company situation... they can't afford it.

Also... if I recall correctly... the IBM PPC 750c on GameCube costed $20 on launch (with packaging) back in 2001... Cell is highly priced.

Blu ray support is alot more expensive than HD DVD from the hardware standpoint to the price per disc.

Even the Development price of the games is alot higher than on xbox 360
One of the reasons for this nightmare is soaring development costs.

The industry insider went on to say, “Kutaragi has said, ‘Please develop suitable software for PS3 - this software must not be of the same standard as PS2 software.’ Developing software for the PS3 from scratch will require an initial investment of at least 2 billion yen [US $17.6 million] [not including development costs]. There are not many software companies that can easily afford that kind of money.”

The prevailing rumor is that many software companies with difficulty may end up developing for the Xbox 360Source: http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/127

Overall, everything seems more expensive, thus the same price as x360 is impossible unless someone pays what the consumer does not (hardware sold at loss? can sony afford it?)

[Kurtle Squad]

So that's like £325 for us then?

It'll probably be more. Things are cheaper in America...much cheaper!!

[Jamba]

Ok time to be blunt.

PSP is selling really well in US and not that bad in the rest of the world, UK especially. However it is not rolling in Sony much money at all as about 75% of the people I know have hacked their PSP. It's kinda like opening the door to the original PSX pirating. So all hardware sales and quite low software sales make the PSP a fairly unprofitable venture so far.

Now they have the PS3, selling at a (from what we can tell) big loss. Again this will be another very large financial strike to the Sony wallet. And they are doing this for 3 main reasons I can guess:
1) A competitive price vs. the xbos360
2) Helps promote a justified use of HDTV, a Sony product.
3) Makes a massive increase in BluRay penetration, again a sony product.

But isn't this just a bit of a tight squeeze even for those reasons?

[evad_lhorg]

hmmm i wonder..... seems a bit too cheap especialy to come with games and movies.

how many dollars does an xbox 360 full system cost?

[Smalldude76]

hmmm i wonder..... seems a bit too cheap especialy to come with games and movies.

That's what I was thinking considering Sony's financial conditions with the lawsuits and faltering departments. If each cell chip is about $150 (i'm guessing US, and weren't there suppposed to be multiple cell chips?) and the blu-ray thing is a lot of cash too, Sony must be expecting to sell a lot of software assuming everything in this thread is true. It'll be interesting to see this unfold. Sony's making some bad choices, but they're not stupid - there must be a reason for this one.

It seems like they're going to pull the same tactic on Microsoft that they did on Sega with the PS2. Give it a year to develop, then blow it away with vastly superior hardware. Although unlike Sega, microsoft has the cash to keep going, had a previously successful console, and actually poses a threat to Sony's dominance.

[Pit-Jr]

Thats a very generous price on the hardware side, but how much is software gonna cost and are people really ready to replace their DVD players, burners, and DVD movies that theyve spent so much money on?

EDIT- heres a 'slightly' biased IGN feature dissing the 360 and heralding the PS3 as the be-all end-all. View with buyers remorse.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/668/668446p1.html

[dukkadukka]

Thats a very generous price on the hardware side, but how much is software gonna cost and are people really ready to replace their DVD players, burners, and DVD movies that theyve spent so much money on?

EDIT- heres a 'slightly' biased IGN feature dissing the 360 and heralding the PS3 as the be-all end-all. View with buyers remorse.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/668/668446p1.html
interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.

[Jordan]

PS3 just seems to have so many pointless features.
7 joypads on a single screen? Jesus christ, imagine that on split screen.
1080p? about 0.1% of people will even be able to run that. HD hasn't even taken off here yet! 720p is the most you're gunna need reguardless...

The point is, we will not know how really powerful the 360 and PS3 are untill they come to market with the same 3rd party game. Thats the only way to be really sure.

[Domstercool]

Well PS2 can have 8pads because games like PES support it.

[Hellfire]

interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.
I don't think there's a safe option right now, regarding next-gen, it all depends on the games and personal taste.

[Caris]

Still looks like a Breadbin For Banana's

[mike-zim]

interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.

I cant see how paying £350+ for a console is the safest option. assuming the rev comes out at about £200 you would be able to buy a delux Rev bundle for the same price as just the PS3 console.

[dukkadukka]

rev sounds great but i know if i spent £200 on it, within a year i'd spend £350 on a ps3 aswell. i can't afford to buy more than one console, and judging by past performances sony will satisfy me most out of the three.

[Hero-of-Time]

According to Spong this info in slightly false.

Reports surfacing overnight claiming that Sony’s Howard Stringer had offered details of the looming PlayStation 3 have turned out to be totally false. The result of a failure to check facts by some web sites resulted claims that PlayStation 3, complete with media-enabled add-on packs, had been announced and priced by the Sony boss. The reports were ficticious, exposing a worrying lack of integrity at some publications.

Some sites repeated verbatim elements of a piece published on CNN yesterday without citing the source, nor checking its accuracy. One news site reported, “PS3 to launch at under $400; will ship with media bundle,” a tantalising headline indeed. It goes on to detail a Fortune Magazine report making no reference to the fact that all the information, which it transpired was completely false, was lifted from CNN. “Sony CEO Howard Stringer has given the clearest indication yet of the company's launch plans for PlayStation 3, stating that the next-gen system will enter the market at between $300 and $400 when it arrives in mid-2006,” reported the writer.

We were beaten to the punch in exposing the dupe by Christian Svensson of Next-Gen who noted, “…the reporting offered a dubious lack of quotes given that the news was sprung from an 'interview'. Next Generation picked up a copy of the 650 word interview in the December 5th issue of Fortune. The PS3 is only mentioned one time, and in reference to a question of how Sony will be generating top-line growth in the face of competition from Samsung and Apple.”

And there’s a final twist, one described to us by one industry watcher as “So utterly transparent it verges on being nauseating.” The games industry writer posted a follow up piece, claiming “CNN drops PS3 price story as Stringer comments are confuted.” Inside it reads, “Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question.”

The writer then seeks to pin the blame for his journalistic blunder on CNN, rather than his own shameless plagiarism and lack of fact-checking.

“So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article on another interview with Stringer, which appeared a few weeks ago and also appeared to attribute pricing and availability information to the Sony CEO. However, on closer inspection, the article was actually citing an anonymous source within Sony.”

[Ryan]

I love Spong they are the most trustworthy site on the internet..

[pedrocasilva]

(...)here's a 'slightly' biased IGN feature dissing the 360 and heralding the PS3 as the be-all end-all. View with buyers remorse.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/668/668446p1.htmlA NRevolution Version of the same article/theme can be found here:
-> http://cube.ign.com/articles/670/670078p1.html

EDIT: Ontopic... about spong... they have the fame, but lately they've been quite accurate, didn't they?

Judge them for what they were in the past year or so; not for what they were in the early begginig, if you were to judge human beings from the early beggining we would be just monkeys. (just my 2 cents)

[Kurtle Squad]

PS3 just seems to have so many pointless features.
7 joypads on a single screen? Jesus christ, imagine that on split screen.
1080p? about 0.1% of people will even be able to run that. HD hasn't even taken off here yet! 720p is the most you're gunna need reguardless...

The point is, we will not know how really powerful the 360 and PS3 are untill they come to market with the same 3rd party game. Thats the only way to be really sure.

I still don't understand the 7 player thing :confused:

[CooInTheZoo]

Its like the Xbox360 having 3 USB slots. Supose you have 4 players with wired controllers...well you cant because theirs nowhere to plug the 4th in! Silly..

[pedrocasilva]

CNN drops PS3 price story as Stringer comments are confused
Rob Fahey 09:53 23/11/2005
No comments on pricing or availability from Sony boss after all


Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question.

The article, which is attributed to FORTUNE senior editor Peter Lewis and was published on the CNN Money website, referenced a new interview with Stringer which has been published in Fortune magazine.

However, in the original version of the article, Lewis cited Stringer as saying that the PS3 would be priced between $300 and $400, and would launch in the middle of next year in Japan, followed by a US launch a couple of months later.

It transpires that no such information was discussed in the original FORTUNE interview - and CNN Money has now pulled the quotes, placing an addendum on the article which says that "Stringer has not commented publicly on how much the PS3 is expected to cost, or how soon it will appear in the US after the Japanese launch in spring 2006."

So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article on another interview with Stringer, which appeared a few weeks ago and also appeared to attribute pricing and availability information to the Sony CEO.

However, on closer inspection, the article was actually citing an anonymous source within Sony - a fine detail which the CNN article apparently missed, setting the whole rumour mill rolling once again.

To date, then, the only official comments on PS3 pricing have come in the form of admonishments from Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi that the new hardware will be expensive - although some commentators feel that these statements are more an indication of Sony's desire to keep the PS2 selling strongly than any real indication of PS3's price point.Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=13184

[DiemetriX]

So no more cheap PS3 then... :/

[demonmike04]

I wouldnt of believed that any way... too much technology for such a price?

The fact they even announced they want people to think 'I will work extra hours to buy that console' but make it so cheap? Bollocks.

[CooInTheZoo]

http://www.gameshout.com/news/102005/article1418.htm

delayed.

[Pit-Jr]

Nice find, could they be revamping the PS3 ?

[dukkadukka]

http://www.gameshout.com/news/102005/article1418.htm

delayed.
no offence intended, but that article's speculation is based on what is most likely a cock-up by a bbc journalist, hardly a reliable source for ps3 news anyway.

[demonmike04]

That gameshout article is based on rumours, but was taken way too serious.

If you remember, not too long ago the rumour of PS3 european launch in 2007 arised, yet still unknown to be true or false. Now, BBC being based in the UK, will only think of the european launch and think it was delayed that long, so most probably said it was delayed til 2007, but forget to mention in europe.

Either way, its bullshit, but may be true since Sony have been awfully quiet.

[Mundi]

meh these "high prices" don´t move me that much in iceland we usually have to buy the console at 2 times more at launch.
for examble when the Ps2 came out in iceland it cost between 600-800 dollars (calculated from dollars to icelandic money)